Victory
by TotoroBird
Summary: After saving her book from the river, he finally recieves his victory. Series of non-chronological one-shots on the absurd and wonderful lives of Liesel Meminger and Rudy Steiner. Some mature content. Now complete.
1. Victory

A/N: So yeah, I wanted to do a fanfic where the laws of canon didn't exist and Rudy finally gets his kiss. Because truthfully, he should have got it for rescuing her book from the river and we all know it.

I honestly don't know why anyone would think I owned the Book Thief, but I'll say it a hundred times and more if it means no one sues me.

...Please don't sue me.

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><p><strong>*A Small Observation From Rudy Steiner*<strong>

**It was like a game of hide and seek.  
><strong>

**I personally thought it was more like a treasure hunt.**

**But what do I know?**

**I'm not the one plunging into the Amper river in the middle of December.**

It was certainly a lot like a treasure hunt.

Searching, scouring, begging the darkness to reveal the grand prize before a darker force of nature stole it from under him. And it was most definitely a grand prize for Rudy Steiner, if he could only find it. Yes. He would find it. It would be a final victory after many failures. He would win.

His gracefully distorted limbs stung in the frosty cold, his numb fingers wildly grasping at anything he could reach. He flailed awkwardly in the black, marble oblivion, an odd mix of a fish in air and a bird in water. His skin ached desperately for warmth; his eyelids were heavy with the weight of the river piled on top of him. It felt like he was wrapped in Winter, a gown of snow and ice.

Yet he continued, determinedly stifling his frozen lungs as he tried to discern the rectangular mound of soggy cardboard and paper from the rest of his blurry blue vision. Each movement was painfully slow, beautiful and soft and deadly, bitten with each dragging, raw second. His ears were ringing like an alarm bell, tearing the wonderful, suffocating silence in half with the crisp clanging of his heartbeat.

He's an odd boy, that one. A brave one, maybe; a stupid one, absolutely. It was hard to tell which factor drove the other, for they were all but indistinguishable whenever Rudy came into question. Not that it mattered most of the time. But then, there were those times - including this one - where he would get himself into impossible situations and even I have to wonder what the hell was going through his head. Bravery? Maybe. Stupidity? Absolutely.

He would have to go back up. His throat thirsted for oxygen. The cold was surely going to draw him to an early, watery grave. Anyone else in the world would have gone back up. Maybe even given up. This was not a case for giving up, however. He needed this.

She needed this.

He could still see it. What had driven him to this point. Who had driven him to this point.

It was the pure devastated defeat that clouded her face as she watched the book tumble over and over in the air, crack the glass surface of the water, and submerge into the deep, black oblivion. Nothing else had really registered at that point, just the overwhelming urge to retrieve that book. Retrieve some form of victory over life, who, up to this point, seemed to be having a great time screwing him over.

True story.

*** A Small Fact That Rudy Would Deny *  
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**On some level, however small and disagreeable that level was to him,  
><strong>

**he wanted to retrieve the smile to the Book Thief's face,  
><strong>

**and the sense of achievement that came with causing it.  
><strong>

**That was victory he truly longed for.**

His pounding blood was burning him up from the inside; the water stung his eyes. Still, he stayed, reaching out for whatever he could find. His limbs were freezing by the second and his head spun wildly.

He had to find it.

For her. For the Book Thief.

Such an odd boy. But then, I suppose humans are very odd creatures. Especially when it comes to love.

Finally, his fingers enclosed around a hard, rectangular object, drifting dreamily through the water. He clutched it to his chest like it was his heartbeat and kicked upward. His clothes pulled him down, yet his eyes made out blanched white sunlight, streaming through layers of December water. His lungs were about to burst as he shattered the water's surface, grasping the book with one hand above his yellow head.

If I had the ability to cheer, I would have done so. Instantly. But I don't think anyone thought about giving me the ability to cheer when I was hired. It's not the type of job that entails joy of any kind. Never stopped me though.

Oxygen filled him once again as he gasped and spat out river from his mouth. He looked around to see Liesel stood by the water's edge, a look of elated surprise falling over her panicked features as she saw him and the book resurface.

*** Another Small Fact *  
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**Despite what Rudy thought, it wasn't the salvaged book  
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**that brought relief to her face.**

Rudy began making his way back to the shore, staggering through the water one handed, a triumphant grin stuck to the corners of his mouth. He heard a crash, and found Liesel stumbling out to meet him, obviously trying to stifle the shivering that had suddenly grappled her small body. They met half way, waist deep in the dark, murky liquid ice, stolen air heaving through their slowly melting lungs.

'Hey.' He grinned breathlessly down at her.

For a moment, Liesel seemed incapable of speech. Then she choked out a small, disbelieving, 'Hey.'

'So, thought you'd join me? Such a lovely day,' he said, gazing casually out at the shimmering, glassy surface of the water as dully glinting crystal beads ran races down his skin.

'Yes, it certainly is pleasant,' she conceded, shivering.

He held out the book, now heavy with river and grime. Her fingers trembled - with either cold or emotion I couldn't really tell, but I think we can take an educated guess - as they folded around the crusty, wet mound and clutched it protectively to her chest. She looked up at him with a strange wide-eyed, parted-lips expression. I've seen that expression before. Oh yes I have.

It's the face of a revelation. The discovery of something new. Or something that had been very well hidden for a long, long time. Buried underneath the thick layers of basements and Jewish fist fighters and accordions, so much so that it could barely breathe, barely be found.

But now it was there. Revealing itself for what seemed for the first time. The secret even Liesel didn't know, slicing through her as acutely as the cold that crept up her skin like vines.

Yet there was fear in her eyes: a helpless vulnerability piercing the brown droplets that reflected him, and only him. She was afraid of this new feeling. She was afraid of him. With the sudden transparency of her soul, she felt exposed and unsure of what any of it meant. It was foreign and dangerous, and a sure ticket to downfall. No, it needed to be suppressed. Like everything else.

Humans can be really quite endearing sometimes.

Rudy watched her expectantly. I'm not entirely sure what he was waiting for - aside from the obvious choice of a kiss, but even he wasn't hopeful for that. Maybe just a response.

'Oi saumensch,' he waved a dripping hand in front of her face. 'I'm sort of freezing here. Now if you could just give me my kiss, I'll be on my way.'

'You wish, saukerl.'

It amazes me that even in the wake of a life altering realization, she still has enough time for a childish retort.

'Come on,' she said, taking a step back and trying to keep the tremor out of her voice, 'We really are going to freeze to death if we stay here.' She turned her back on him and headed for the shore, her paces dripping heavily with sudden self-awareness.

It took Liesel exactly six steps and a half to realise that her best friend was not actually following her; she turned in confusion and mild irritation to see Rudy stood exactly where he had been for the past five minutes. Half-submerged in reflected sky, he looked expectantly at her. His perfect German eyes balanced neatly between foolish hope and something that cut far deeper into the chiselled, icy blue. Sadness. Another emotion I know all too well.

'What the hell are you doing, dummkopf? You're going to lose your toes at this rate!' she called to him.

'I wasn't joking.' His voice slipped across the smooth surface of the water, flat and defeated as the concrete sky above them.

Liesel didn't want to play this game. He was meddling with her emotions, twisting them and twirling them round his fingers. Was it on purpose or not? She had no way of telling. But whatever happened, it could only hurt in the end. There was no way she could afford the cripplingly high price of this revelation.

'Niether was I.'

Such a cold sound. Colder than the frost that crept along the tiny hairs on her arms. If temperature affected me, I could have felt the icy words slice through my chest like it did to the boy. Hurt grappled his face, eating at his eyes, yet he kept his face a solid as stone.

***The Truth About Rudy Steiner***

**He was a brave boy.**

**Braver than most.**

**But I have never seen him braver**

**than this moment of betrayal and heartbreak.**

'What do I have to do for you, Liesel?'

There it was. The question that had stuck, discarded and forgotten but still overwhelmingly present, in his throat since the very beginning, built up from the dusty remains of childhood adoration. As his love for her grew, so did the questions, until they fogged his brain and leaked out his lips when he knew she was nowhere around. The words he asked the darkness when sleep was a faraway prospect that clawed away from him.

He wasn't even sure if he wanted an answer. He needed one, that was for certain. But did he necessarily want one? Now that's a different question entirely.

And so there he stood. Gazing hopefully at the Book Thief - his Book Thief - for some kind of reassurance, however paper thin, however transparent. Because there was nothing else.

Liesel looked at him in surprise, her earthy brown eyes wide. It was the rare use of her actual name rather than petty insults of endearment that hit hard. For a moment, she was rendered speechless, unable to find any words to compensate such a bittersweet question. Her fingers clenched around the thick, damp cover of her beloved book, the price of her best friend.

'I-' she began, then stopped abruptly. It was one of those rare points in her papery life that she was lost for words. After another deep breath, she began again. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Don't play dumb with me,' he spat out, his voice stinging the cold, winter air.

'Rudy, I don't know. Now just come out of the water, before you catch pneumonia or something,' she said impatiently.

'Would you care?' he asked. 'Would you really care?' He waded further out into the water, a look of stubborn, determined malice on his face. His eyebrows were raised defiantly, his arms out in the air beside him like a crucifix.

'Rudy,' she hissed. Her voice was edged with a sharp, ringing warning tone. 'Of course I care about you.'

'Oh yeah?' he bellowed. 'Well then why don't you prove it.'

Liesel glared at him. Her grip on the book was loosening.

'Come on, Book Thief.' She could here the taunting in his voice, the raw, aching hurt underneath. Or maybe that was just me. 'What are you afraid of? Just prove it!'

The book fell from her grasp onto the soft, crunchy earth beside her feet. The water splashing noisily around her rapidly flooding shoes barely registered as she marched straight towards the boy with lemon hair.

'You think I don't care?' she yelled, stumbling as fast as she could through the strong, muscly arms of the river, 'Do you? You think I don't care? Well I do! I love you, you hear me? I goddamn love you, saukerl!'

Rudy could barely reply, barely even smile before her lips swiftly met with his, crushing his grin with her own. He staggered a little, nearly losing his balance in the water, but her determined grip on him would not allow him to do so. His lips tasted like river, and ice, and stolen penny sweets. He tasted like Rudy Steiner, simply Rudy Steiner, her wonderful, wonderful best friend.

Her arms wove around his neck, locked him there; she wouldn't release him until he got the point, no matter how long it took. One arm wrapped round her waist and pulled her close to him, the other tangled longingly in her almost-German hair, pulling her closer still. Close was never enough for his Book Thief. The cold seemed to evaporate around them as Rudy received the victory he truly longed for.

Liesel poured everything into that kiss. All the hidden love and passion burning underneath the stolen books, and the dusty taste of library that she relished so much. This kiss was her revelation. He was her revelation. Of course she loved him. That stupid boy with his yellow hair and idiot Hitler Youth grin. There was never any doubt.

Rudy was never one for words. It was difficult for him to acutely describe the wild, frozen drumming of his heartbeat as he felt Liesel press up against him; the soft texture of her messy hair in his damp, muddy hand. Yet it didn't stop him almost lifting her into the air in elation and pure, unrestrained euphoria.

She could taste his smile, his triumph on her lips. It tasted so sweet, such a delicious prize, a wonderful gift from one thief to another. In some sickly, tender twist of metaphorical beauty, they had managed to steal each other's hearts somehow, though it is biologically impossible and - if I may say so - a little cliché.

Liesel pulled away softly, yet Rudy held her in place, unwilling to release her quite yet. They attempted (and failed) to steady their breathing, the silent, joyful rasping of their desperate lungs, craving the oxygen they stole from each other.

'Is that proof enough, arsehole?' she grinned up at him, her hands still resting on the back of his neck.

'Nope,' he shook his head in mock disappointment. 'Not quite.'

'What do I have to do for you?' she sighed in exasperation, mimicking his words.

'I don't know,' he said thoughtfully, kissing her on the nose and earning a laugh from her. 'What do you propose?'

'Well,' she replied levelly, 'For starters, we should get out of this bloody water before I pass out from cold.'

'Fair point.'

Clutching his hand with numb fingers, Liesel led him towards the shore, the frost clinging to their lungs and rib cages like cement. They staggered onto the grass, clothed in river, nearly tumbling over onto their grubby knees. Rudy caught her to him, pulling her close again, and kissing her lips once again.

'What's the probability of my clothes drying before Rosa finds out?' she asked contemplatively.

'Pretty slim, saumensch.'

'Well as long as we don't freeze to death, do you fancy a walk?'

'Sounds good to me.'

Liesel knelt down and picked up the sodden lump from the ground and they headed off towards the bridge, fingers clumsily entwined.

***A Small Observation From Myself***

**Truthfully, it was more like a treasure hunt.**

**By no means was the book ever the prize.**

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><p>AN: Thank you for reading. I'm sorry if I made that too fluffy; I know it may not be completely in character but these two are just too damn adorable.

I may - MAY - continue it. It depends really on feedback and whether I have any inspiration over the next few days. I'll really try to continue it if that's what people want but I can't promise anything.

I hope you enjoyed and please leave a review! It really makes my day.


	2. Home

**A/N: Hey guys. I originally just planned this as a one-shot, but people really want another chapter, so BAM! Here you go.**

**'It's basically going to be key points in their relationship (I know it's been done to death but I really have no clue how else to go about it - great writer aren't I?) but mostly linking to one theme of victory and loss. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me this long. I hope it lives up to your expectations.**

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><p>So here we are again. On another treasure hunt. But one of an entirely different kind.<p>

***The Inconvenient Truth***

**Himmel wasn't Himmel anymore.**

**Sometimes I really hate the truth.**

I watched as Liesel sat on the dusty, cracked ground in a wide pool of harsh, grey sunlight. Scraps of dissolved concrete floated through the air like snowflakes, drifting across her eyelids and resting in the folds of her clothes. There was Himmel Street all over her, eating at her bitterly heavy lungs and creeping into her ashen blonde hair. She let it. She wanted to be smothered with home. She wanted to breathe it in until it was all that existed.

Her fingers crawled through the mountainous piles of crumbling brick and shattered glass. She ignored the scraping bites on her hands from the rough, sharp edges - unidentifiable in their present state. What could have been a shard of grimy window could have equally been a jagged corner of wall. Not that it mattered. Nor did it matter that there was a small stream of hot blood dribbling from her palms to her fingernails. Nothing mattered.

It was hard to determine what exactly she was looking for, and why she was here in the first place. Only she seemed to know why she was swimming through rubble. But then, that's how it was. The days since the sky was set on fire had dragged into a long, mournful blur, as if the world had given up on itself. Nothing seemed to function correctly anymore. Not even Liesel.

It was difficult to discern one date from another, and the time in between was another hour of clutching at the warm oblivion of sleep and watching her mind fall into decay while awake. Dreams and reality merged into each other like watercolours, powered by her salty tears. Her heart was aching. Every. Goddamn. Day.

Sometimes she would find herself wandering, just wandering, along the cold, concrete streets, the murmuring and laughing of the passers by ringing in her unsteady mind. Her feet would lead her to the oddest of places - sometimes to the cupboard under the stairs in 18 Grande Strasse, where she would curl up among the jutting chimneys of brooms and shelving; and sometimes as far as the the very edge of Molching. Then her feet would bring her wandering right back, maybe at the dawn of another chipped, painted pink morning, to an unfamiliar bed.

It had been exactly - and ironically - thirty three days since Liesel had last seen Rudy. After a tearful reunion with his father at the funeral, he had left with him, at the same time hiding away into nothingness, beyond her line of sight. Maybe he had gone away. Far away from where the line between life and death was distorted and unpredictable. She really wouldn't have been surprised.

It had also been thirty three days since Liesel had last spoken. Whether it was her stubborn disposition towards opening up about her emotions, or whether the shock had genuinely stripped her of all she was, no words were born from her tongue and tossed into the world to be eaten up.

All words had been stolen from her lips. Every golden syllable, every delicious sound drawn from her throat with needle sharp accuracy. Everything else had melted away. These days, the Book Thief was silent.

Truthfully, that prospect was better than facing the other, more devastating reality.

***A Small, Sad Fact***

**Four things were missing from Liesel's shattered life:**

**1x Max Vandeburg**

**1x Ilsa Hermann's little black book**

**1x Mama **

**1x Papa **

Oh Papa...

Dusty tears tumbled from under her eyelids, leaving racetracks in the Himmel Street dirt plastering her face. Yet her hands continued to fumble mindlessly, mercilessly for whatever could ease the determination rising in her chest. Her forearms were scratched and coated with a fine layer of ash, suffocating her pale skin with grey from the plane's ribcage.

I noticed that Liesel wore no shoes. Ironically, that was the first thing I noticed when Heaven was destroyed. Her feet were bare and cracked like glass, digging into the warm, gritty road beneath her. It was a depressing sight, seeing such a delicate mess of pale limbs - so liable to break - and heavy brown eyes crushed against a backdrop of solid, grey tarmac.

Liesel could vaguely hear the buzzing of morning gossip like the faraway murmur of insects. A sea of indistinguishable noise seeping into her consciousness as she dug deeper and deeper into the ruins.

But there was another noise. A familiar noise. One that stood on it's own from the raging ocean behind her. Oh, how she loved that sound; held it close to her heartbeat in such a corrupted world, when nothing else existed. It called her name.

'Liesel!'

She could hear him. Her wonderful next door neighbour. The boy she gave into only a year ago. It had been some stupid dare, or something along those lines. He had threatened to freeze to death, so the only course of action seemed pretty obvious. That day, her saukerl got his kiss. No regrets there.

But no. No more distractions. She needed to find it. It had to be somewhere nearby.

'Liesel? Are you there?' The voice was closer. She wanted to call back, escape the ugly little world of solitude she had trapped herself in. But the ash in her lungs and the angry red motivation beating into her skull prevented her. She couldn't remember how to speak.

Max would be disappointed. The Word Shaker? Forgotten how to speak? That would be the day.

But that day had come. There were no more words.

Except maybe one.

'Rudy.'

It fell defeatedly from her lips, as insubstantial and light as a raindrop, scattering as it hit the ground. Her throat ached with disuse and the strained effort of producing that small, insignificant, two-syllabled word. But it was her word. Of course it was hers.

'Liesel!' The voice seemed to have located her and was getting nearer. She could hear the scuffling footsteps of Jesse Owens running. He was getting closer. She could just turn around and see his familiar lemon hair and his idiot face, so sorely missed in its gaping absence. Her best friend had come back.

Yet she continued to scrabble through the decomposing bones of her old house. She had to find it. Like he had found it.

He had searched through ice. She would search through fire.

There was a spray of dirt as he skidded to a halt (surprise, surprise) and there he stood before her, his eyes wide with concern, and - more prominently - confusion. His hands had unconsciously curled into fists

***Something No One Knew***

**Rudy had hoped he could go to his grave without returning to Himmel.**

**I don't blame him.**

'Hey,' Rudy said softly.

That word. She knew it well. The first word he said when he re-emerged from the great, icy oblivion of the Amper River, clutching it in his trembling hands.

Liesel was silent. She contemplated exercising her vocal chords, old and dusty with endless hours of misuse. But she had nothing to say. With the exception of...

'Hey.'

Rudy bit down on a nostalgic smile - one of the best, most painful kind - and, drawing reassurance from this short, dead word, knelt down beside her. Her roaming fingers froze where they were, pausing on a stiff, snapped paintbrush as she stared straight ahead. I wondered briefly if she knew who this object belonged to but I decided not to question this bitterly ironic occurrence.

It was on the edge of his tongue, barely hidden behind his teeth. A question. A question she could not possibly have a logical answer to. She could feel it tasting the air as if contemplating its escape. She knew long before it came.

'Why are you here?' he asked quietly.

There it is.

Liesel honestly wanted to give him an answer. She wanted to smile, and tell him it was there was no reason. No reason at all. She wanted to reach over and kiss him, and for him to kiss her back, because everything's alright. Isn't it? Isn't it.

No it isn't. It will never be alright.

'I-' She gulped and began again. 'I don't know.'

'Liesel,' he said. She looked up at him, and saw deep distress in buried deep under the surface of his perfect German eyes. 'Don't bullshit me. I'm not an idiot. Just tell me what's wrong.'

Such a large, consequential proposition for such a small, insignificant young girl. The way of the world I suppose.

Liesel had the urge to argue, to sting the air with her burning, recycled words. But it would hurt her more than the boy.

'Take an educated guess.'

'Liesel,' he warned, 'I didn't come back here for a bunch of cryptic clues. What's wrong?'

'Everything,' she said flatly. 'Everything.'

'Oh,' he said, scratching his head sheepishly, 'I guess I am an idiot for not figuring that out.'

'Just a little bit.'

They fell into another silence, but the disposition was considerably warmer. Rudy always seemed on the verge of letting out another question, seemingly deciding against it each time.

Liesel watched him thoughtfully. He had grown quite a bit since the river incident: he was certainly taller now, but hadn't quite started to broaden out, like he couldn't quite catch up with himself. His dearly familiar face was mostly the same, except for one majorly apparent factor: me. Meeting me and my work can change the most innocent, the most fragile young souls into monsters. Rudy now had a cold, despairing wariness chipping away at his eyes. He knew that his childish concept of consistency and eternity had been shattered, and now he never wanted to make the same mistake again. It hurt too much.

'By everything, what exactly do you mean?' he asked cautiously.

'Nothing. By definition, nothing. Everything is dead.'

They were ugly words. Disgusting, putrid, absolutely truthful words. And she spat them out with anger and grief, her voice wavering with threatening sobs. They tumbled onto the pale grey ground, blanched with disinfectant sunlight.

This time, it was Rudy that was silent. She could hear his uneven breathing as he tried to steady the tears that were grappling his face.

'I should have died,' she muttered, digging her fingernails into the splintered wood of the paintbrush, 'I should have died...'

No.

Liesel let out a heartbroken wail and collapsed onto the pavement, her hands slumping away from what was once her home, her beloved home, where her Mama and Papa once lived and breathed. They were so close, yet further away than she could reach. She wanted to reach for them, hold their hands one more time, kiss them goodbye, drink champagne with her Papa, hug her Mama, beautiful, beautiful Mama.

But they were gone. Far, far away. It killed her.

Rudy wrapped his arms around her trembling form, pulling her head up into his neck so that she was curled into him. His throat was immediately smattered with her tears, mingling with his own which were now flowing smoothly and soundlessly down his face. She looked up at him, her brown eyes wide, with pure, unrestrained sadness, simply sadness. He thought she looked beautiful.

'It hurts, Rudy,' she whispered, closing her eyes. 'Why won't it stop?'

'I know it hurts, I know,' he murmured, pressing his lips to her forehead and rocking her gently.

'I should have died. Why couldn't I have died?' She was crying now. Her sobs were coming in hard and fast, biting her aching lungs as her small body involuntarily convulsed. Rudy clung to her, forever rocking her like a child. It was oddly comforting.

'Just let it end,' she wept. 'Please just let it end.'

These words cut dangerously close to where my bones would be, if I indeed had any. It was because they were directed at me. She was not stating her wishes. She was requesting it.

Any merciful person would give in to it. But I suppose you could say I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to these matters. Besides, I couldn't possibly have done such a thing to the very distressed Rudy Steiner.

'Stop it,' he said, and I heard the childish tremor in his voice, 'You're not going to die.'

'Please,' she begged. 'Let it end.'

'Liesel, stop it,' he cried, 'You give up like this, you can't...'

'I can't do it, Rudy. It's too much,' she whined, clutching his hand.

'You can,' he choked out. 'You will.'

He cupped her face, carefully rubbing away her tears with his thumb, but more appearing out of nowhere like rain. Her face was coated in dust and grime, her crying having cut racetracks through it. She looked so desperate, so very tired, balancing on the edge of sleepy defeat and crippling insanity.

He wanted to tell her about the life she'd have. He wanted to tell her about the books he'd buy for her once he had the money; the library they'd build together and fill up with her words. Her beautiful brown eyes in the face of their laughing, yellow haired child. The smile on her lips when she saw her book in the local store. He wanted to tell her everything. But the words were dried up in his throat, suffocating as the concrete sky. So he did something else.

Rudy leant down and kissed her so very tenderly on her cheek. Her heaving, ragged breathing slowed and evened out. Her clenched fists loosened, the dried blood plastered to her fingers cracking as they crept up to cradle his dear, dear face. He kissed her eyelids, then her nose, and then, finally, her craving mouth. On broken Himmel, two youths were entwined.

***An Observation***

**That kid really knows how to get into the Book Thief's head.**

They broke apart, gazing at each other softly. Liesel's lungs suddenly swelled with glorious, earthy words as they grew from her veins and grappled her fluttering heart, like a strong note drawn from an accordion's lips. She felt like she was going to burst with the sheer, daunting height of adoration that flooded her thoughts. She wasn't happy as such. That would come later. But she knew she was loved. It was good enough for her.

'I'm sorry,' she murmured, wiping her eyes. 'I was being an idiot.'

'Just a little bit.'

She let out a small, shaky laugh and reached up to kiss him once again. He smiled into her ashen mouth, holding her close. They released each other eventually, and pushed themselves to their feet. Feathery flakes of smoky brick had settled in their hair, blanching them grey, swirling in the air. It was a harsh kind of beauty, the soft, sweet decaying kind that not many have the painful privilege to witness. It tasted like metallic industrialism and home.

'Let's get out of here,' Rudy muttered, looking around at the silence.

Liesel nodded, looking down at the tear-stained, blood-stained carcass of her former house. Her eyes never left it as Rudy led her away, through the stony-faced streets towards the Amper River. None of of them were as beautiful as Himmel. None even came close. They imprinted its dust on the roads with every footstep.

As the familiar sound of rushing water met with their blunted senses, Rudy looked down at her hand and yelped.

'Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What the hell have you done to your hand?' he exclaimed, examining it more closely.

'The rubble did that,' she explained, glancing at it dismissively.

'Why?' He looked at her incredulously, then back at her bleeding fingers.

'I was looking for something,' she replied levelly.

She could feel his inquisitive gaze boring into her, and knew, before all else, the would be another question stinging the air. Because Rudy never really knew when to shut up.

'What were you looking for?' he asked, once curiosity seemed to overwhelm him. It does that a lot.

'The Whistler,' she said. His confused expression prompted an explanation. She sighed, and continued.

'I don't know exactly. This morning, I just woke up with the urge to find it - my head has been sort of screwed up recently. It felt like I needed to, like it was almost like a betrayal to you if I didn't. How you had risked you life for it and I couldn't exactly repay you-' Rudy opened his mouth to interrupt but was swiftly silenced with a hard look from her, '-I wanted to keep your victory alive, in a way. I didn't want your efforts to go to waste.'

She shook her head and sighed again. 'Fat lot of good it did. I end up having a bloody breakdown and I don't even find it.'

Rudy was enveloped in contemplative silence for several seconds. Then, 'Thank you.'

'For what?' she asked in surprise.

'For you,' he said seriously, then grinned. I wondered what exactly had possessed him to say such a stupid line, then I remembered that he was completely under that girl's influence and probably wouldn't be leaving for several years to come. Humans really make my day sometimes.

Her eyebrows shot up. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. 'God, Rudy. Why did you have to make it so corny?' she laughed.

'Because you love me and you know it' he informed her, smirking.

Suddenly, she reached out for his arm and tugged him into a fierce hug. He froze momentarily in surprise, then hesitantly wrapped his arms around her waist. She smelt of home.

'I do,' she murmured into his shoulder.

Then, just as swiftly, she released him and ran, almost as fast as Rudy, across the bridge and back to 18 Grande Strasse. She didn't stop until she was upstairs in her new bedroom, clutching her aching ribs.

Then, she let herself weep.

Exactly two and a half days later, she found something hidden under a bush beside the front step. It was rectangular, old and crusted over with dried precipitation and ash. She could just make out the title on the front.

'Goddamn...' she whispered, a smile growing at the corners of her lips.

The Whistler.

***Something Liesel Now Knew***

****Rudy had hoped he could go to his grave without returning to Himmel.****

****But he did.****

****Twice.****

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><p><strong><strong>AN: Sorry for the long wait. It took me such a friggin long time - and when I say long, I mean Season 4 of Sherlock came back before I finished this. I think it may have been the most painful fanfic I've ever had to write, because I got stuck every other sentence and I had no idea where it was going. So thank God, it's done.****

****Expect more chapters, because they're on their way. Just don't expect them in chronological order because it's going to jump around their timeline a bit.****

****Thank you for your continued support. You all make my day so much brighter.****


	3. Pain

**A/N: Hey guys, it's me again. Sorry it's been so long, I've been away for a week in a place with no wifi. Thank you for your reviews (and patience). Like I said, it really makes me happy and gives me a valid reason to write. So thanks again.**

**This chapter has jumped ahead several years and has less LieselxRudy fluff in, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.**

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><p>Pain.<p>

Hot, white, intense pain.

Featuring an odd and slightly disturbing mixture of pleading denial from her own body and the forceful, barging crusade of the mysterious little creature between her thighs. It was like nothing Liesel had ever quite experienced, and truthfully, hoped not to experience again.

***In a Blank, White Room***

**The Book Thief was giving birth.**

Her fingers were tightly knotted in institutional, disinfectant sheets, _Munich Hospital _stamped in grim, boxy letters at the head. A thousand hands seemed to be gripping her legs all at once and shoving them up to her chest, a indistinguishable murmur of paper thin reassurance and buzzing encouragements chewing at her ears and causing a dull, blunted pain in her forehead.

Tight, crystal beads of sweat dripped down her face, dragging across her skin like the neat, little click of the seconds passing on the clock. Her insides were collapsing in on themselves with strain. She groaned as another wild, tender wave gripped her abdomen, both crushing her and holding her together at the same time with remarkable power, then collapsed back onto the synthetic polyester pillow. Each gulp of oxygen was a stab in her lungs, acutely centred in her heaving chest with the accuracy of a icy, sharp needle.

Liesel had suffered through all kinds of ordeals. Through bombs from a plane's ribcage, through funeral after funeral, through graveyard after graveyard. She had been beaten and corrupted and buried in dust. From Himmel to Hölle in only the first few years of her life. But this...this was like nothing Liesel knew.

She had no idea where the _fuck_ that saukerl was, nor why he was absent. Last thing she had heard through the thick, vague ringing in her ears was Rudy calling to her as he ran out the room, saying something about 'get Max'. At this current moment, those words made literally no sense to her and she honestly didn't give a flying shit what a 'Max' was.

How the hell Rudy had convinced her this was a good idea was beyond her. Let's have a child, he said. It will be _fun_, he said. Of course _he_ had fun. His bit was over and done with at the very beginning and _she _had to suffer the consequences. If he so much even came near her after this, she would personally castrate him. Idiot.

That woman is truly charming when in labour. Have fun Rudy.

Several hours had already passed, each being slowly and languorously eaten, almost mockingly, then spat right back out at her, ready for her to endure yet another while longer. Time always seemed to taunt her, flaunting the future at her then pulling it from under her feet upon reaching it. Time kept moving the goalpost. The future never came. There was just the present, and the excruciating ache between her legs that flooded every jerking second she resided in.

Her fingernails had scraped from the bedsheets to her thighs, gripping the soft, slick skin and leaving little crescent moons in the flesh. Damp curls of yellow hair were clinging to her forehead, dripping with perspiration. Another groan tore from her lips, and she curled inward, biting down hard on her kneecap for something to wrench her mind away from the pain.

I watched the scene unfurl in twisted curiosity. Reproduction and birth are one of the more grotesquely fascinating processes of life; it's an intense, passionate and oddly beautiful encounter with the laws of nature and evolution that ultimately culminates in another person living and breathing. Another person for me to pick up one day.

Generally, I am a stranger to this area of existence; I deal with the other end of the wonderfully colourful spectrum. But sometimes, under terribly unfortunate circumstances, birth and death aren't as far apart as people would hope. I'm careful with young souls; I carry them in my arms.

***On These Very Sad Occasions***

**It's always the colour white.**

**I don't like that colour.**

Surely it should be over by now? Why wasn't it ending? The waves were growing in frequency, racking her body with hot, burning cramps at her core. They spread through her veins, reaching to the very ends of her being, beating angrily into her head like a tonne of bricks.

It is odd, when you think about it. Sat on high at the top of every human hierarchy, on a golden throne of words and soldiers - a deadly combination - is a man. Always, always a man. And yet, it is the women that endure such hardships that could potentially eat away at them until there was nothing left.

How exactly was it that the male gender clawed its way to the top? Surely females are the stronger race? Especially while witnessing one of said female gender trying to force a child out of her body. Just something I wonder about.

***An Unnecessary Observation***

**Oddly enough, most creatures in nature have worked this out.**

**Only humans haven't.**

**Surprise, surprise.**

The crescent moons were drawing tiny droplets of blood, clumping around the pretty indentations like rose petals. They smiled benignly up at her, ten curving little grins littered across her pale skin, and she found herself hating them, and hating her body, and hoping to Christ that this would end, and the goddamn pain would stop.

The woman between her legs was yelling something about 'it's coming'. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming. Such wonderful, wonderful words. They drifted through her thoughts like a flurry of snow, soothing the hot ache licking at the corners of her throbbing mind. The air tasted of them, delicious and bittersweet. It's coming. Finally.

Suddenly, her abdomen was crushed once again, more intensely, more acutely, directing the pain at her centre as delicately as a sledgehammer. The waves turned to storm, a hurricane in her belly spirally wildly downward. A hoarse scream released from her suffocated throat, ripping the thick, heavy air into pieces like scraps of sky. Her insides clenched, tightening into dense knots. It hurt so very much.

There was a peculiar, slippery sensation beneath her, and then...nothing. Just nothing. Everything stopped. Her head fell back against the pillow, her breathing steadying as the gripping pain slowly subsided and slid away from her bones, to be replaced by a dull, blunt soreness between her thighs. Relief lapped at her skin, the sweat drying on the soft, tired flesh.

All she could hear was the indistinguishable murmur of nurses rummaging about around her, cooing little snippets of praise to her and all her hard work, as if she had just won an award for rescuing several children from a burning building.

But there was another sound. Something that tugged at her veins ands made her feeble heart flutter. A weak, whining little cry.

Her eyes cracked open, searching in curiosity for the source of the sound. It seemed to be hidden among white-clad bodies and buzzing flurries of movement. She eyes ached for it, empty of it. One of the mess of white broke away with a solemn smile, carrying a small bundle.

'Your son, Mrs. Steiner.'

The bundle was carefully laid on her chest. Her hands tentatively crept up to meet the new arrival, cradling it as she looked at it for the first time.

I stepped closer in curiosity, peering at the face of another I would doubtless come to face one day.

Her heart swelled up like accordion bellows as she took in the face of her own baby: his ugly little scrunched up face, twisted into a sleepy cry, and she knew she had never seen anything so truly, unbearably beautiful. So perfect. His small, impossibly soft limbs stretched and curled, his tiny fingers tracing her face, plastered with blood and grime from her womb. She kissed each little fingerprint as they crossed her chin, a watery smile spreading like wings on her face.

It was a mystery to her, how she - a thief, an orphan, a corrupted woman - could have possibly created such a pure, beautiful young creature. He was her flesh and blood, made from her flesh and blood. How could she have made him? He was too innocent, too flawless: from his soft, sparsely yellow-crested head to the tips of his minute toes.

His small, teardrop eyes slid open a little, just enough to take in this odd, beaming creature above him. He contemplated her in mild curiosity. Liesel could only just make out the rusty brown pools at the centre of his eyes, peeking up at her beneath his heavy pink eyelids. She was struck with how much his eyes resembled the pair she often caught sight of reflected in her mirror each day.

A powerfully strong new emotion grappled her heart, weaving between her ribs and filling her lungs with words - most of which were synonims for the same term - as she held him close, cradled his soft, sweet head against her neck. Everything else melted away. No one else mattered. It was just Liesel and her son, her beautiful child.

He was her finest, most wonderful moment, swallowed by time, to continue for the rest of her life.

'What did I miss?' Rudy ran into the room, breathing heavily and clutching his side.

'About time you turned up,' she said. 'Where did you go?'

'I told you. I went to get Max.'

'Oh.' The concept made considerably more sense now that her body wasn't trying to explode. 'Uh, thanks.'

Rudy seemed to have made eye contact with the young infant, wrapped up protectively - and a little possessively - in her arms, who at that current moment (much like his parents would have done, I might add) was staring back, almost defiantly.

He was their son, alright.

Rudy walked forward slowly and stood limply beside the bed, his blue eyes an odd but rather endearing combination of curiosity and tenderness. 'Is this-' he gulped and began again, 'Is this our baby?'

'No, I stole him,' she replied solemnly.

'Him?' Rudy beamed up at her, 'We've had a boy?'

His face was so joyful, balancing neatly on the edge of tears, looking more and more like the hopeful boy she first fell in love with. She wanted to kiss him, but she didn't have the energy.

'Yes,' she smiled. 'We've had a boy.'

Rudy seemed to be rendered speechless for a moment. 'He's perfect,' he murmured.

'Why thank you, I made him myself.'

He raised an eyebrow at her and she couldn't help but grin back at him. 'Okay, that may not be strictly true, but I did most of the work!'

'True, true,' he conceded. 'Can I hold him?'

Liesel's grip tightened a little protectively on the child - her motherly attachment to the baby extending beyond her womb - yet she allowed Rudy to scoop him up, kiss the top of his grimy, little head and hold him close to his chest, rocking his son back and forth. He really was tiny compared to his father, a small mound of skin and bone, chirping in bewilderment at being suddenly removed from his mother.

'Thank you,' she said quietly.

'What for?' he asked as he gently transitioned his weight from one foot to the other to the rhythm of a lullaby.

'What do you think, saukerl? For him!' She looked up at them both, old and new, past and future, and knew for certainty that she had never loved anything more. Her little family. Family: a concept she thought she had lost forever. 'Thank you for him.'

The baby began to cry, a small, desperately vulnerable sound among the bustling, buzzing hospital outside of the doors. She had the urge to snatch him back and just hold him.

'I think he likes you better,' Rudy said, passing him back to Liesel.

'He damn well better. The little saukerl nearly killed me.' She smiled down at him as his cries gave way into sleep, shaking her head a little. 'Idiot.'

Rudy gazed affectionately down at his beautiful wife and child, and felt a swell of pride aching in his chest. His hand came up to stroke her damp hair as she settled back into the bed, resting her head on the white, iron teeth of the headboard.

'You've done so well,' Rudy said, dropping to a kneel beside the bed.

'I didn't think this far,' Liesel said thoughtfully. 'I didn't think what would come next.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well all I wanted to do was get this stupid little thing-' she kissed the tip of her son's nose, '-out of me. But I wasn't expecting to love him this much.' She was silent for a moment; one of those heavy silences, like a raincloud drifting through the dust.

'I've only known him ten minutes, and yet I would die for him,' she said finally and was struck with the gravity of this sentence, surprised at the truth in her words and the lengths she would go for this child. Her child.

And it was true. She hadn't expected the pure, uncompromising density of compassion that grappled her entire being and scattered all other matters in her mind. This had all been for Rudy. She went through with it for him, and him alone. She had barely come into making that choice, all biological soundings aside. It had been Rudy's child, not hers.

Liesel and Rudy gazed wearily at each other, then Rudy leant across and kissed her, long and tender. It was an exhaust of efforts, and she melted into it out of sheer tiredness. Her limbs ached from their eight hour contortion, her insides were unravelling like a mess of paper, words spilling out at the edges. He pulled away and rested his forehead on hers.

'Love you, saumensch,' he murmured.

'Love you too,' she replied, gradually drifting off into the warm, blissful oblivion of sleep.

She could only just make out his footsteps as he headed out into the blank, disinfectant corridors to reassure a worn out Max that yes, she was fine, and no, it wasn't a girl as he had predicted earlier, and yes, it was the most beautiful child they had ever laid eyes upon. Max would most likely visit at dawn once she had recovered enough to receive him.

Still curled up in her arms was her child. Their child. The victory she never thought she would achieve. The victory she didn't know she had wanted.

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><p><strong>AN: Again, thanks for your patience. I didn't intend for it to be so fluffy and cliché, but I guess that's how it ends up sometimes. I really hope that it was worth the wait and that I'll see you all again in the next chapter - which, by the way, has jumped back a few years.**

**Please remember to review. It means such a lot to me and makes me fangirl about 50% more during my day. Thank you for reading.**


	4. Dark

**A/N: This was originally going to be a one-shot by itself, but since I'm doing a chapter story, tah dah. Another chapter for you wonderful people.**

**Like I said, I don't own The Book Thief. If I did, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction.**

**Anyway, enjoy! And drop a review if you can because they really make my day.**

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><p>It was dark.<p>

Thick and black, the kind of dark you could choke on if breathed in to heavily. The type of dark that would fill a child's eyes and rip away any concept of sleep. It was nightmare dark.

The only thing that separated the dark and the apprehensive faces sat huddled together was the frosty, yellow glow of the lanterns people had brought down.

The basement smelt of dust and sweat, and a good deal of cement. Paint tins lined up on the shelves, as solemn as soldiers. It was bitingly cold, slowly but surely eating away at any bare skin. Unseen yet overwhelmingly present was the inky, black night outside, swallowing the street in an unsettling stalemate against the Earth.

The boy looked around at them all, watching the dull, throbbing fear grip each face with each stray, far off sound. The falling bombs outside sounded like fat raindrops on a window, small and ugly, most likely leaving a messy trail of rubble and broken road. It was painfully silent in the large, stuffy room. As he took in the image, void of any joy or hope, he prayed that he wouldn't die like this, in someone's basement, with a bunch of semi-strangers.

***One Small Note***

**He wouldn't die that way.**

**Just so you know.**

Though the rest of his limbs felt like they were frozen over in the stillness, his left hand stayed warm. In it was clasped the hand of his next door neighbour, sweating a little in fear. He looked over at her. Her face was solemn and still. Though her fingers gripped his tightly in apprehension for any number of possibilities - most of which resulted in death - her expression remained calm, her almost-German eyes gazing ahead.

Her other hand was tracing the smooth, scratchy cover of her book._ Of course._ If there was one thing his best friend would choose to salvage from her home, a book would be far up on her list of priorities.

Even in the dark, he could recognise the title. The Whistler. He knew that book well, if not by the story, by its cover. He had managed to find that cover buried under the thick, black, December water of the Amper river. It had not been the easiest task he had ever performed, nor was it a task that her would happily do again. He would do it for her. Only her.

The pages still looked damp and crusty from its meeting with the water. The cover was littered with large watermarks, sprawled out like drops of ink on the front. Yet her fingernails caressed it lovingly like a child, as if it were her her closest and dearest friend. Yeah, well, it would have to get in line because he wasn't getting replaced by a mound of cardboard and paper.

Another bomb fell. Another raindrop. Her hand tensed in his grasp. The silence was suffocating. It ached in his lungs. It felt like each second drove him into near-madness; there was no noise except the tuneless, scraping song of friendship between girl and book and the heartbeat in a plane's ribcage.

There was a sound beside him, uncertain and quiet. A small, articulately spelled out word sliced through the silence and hung in the heavy air, verging on the edge of disappearing. He looked over at his neighbour again. The book was open in her lap, one hand gripping the edge in apprehension. Her lips were parted, halfway in the act of releasing another word, yet she held it back, confined behind her teeth for someone to let her continue.

Maybe it was that old aching longing for her to be happy - the one that drove him to the point of plunging into the depths of the river. Maybe it was the gut-wrenching lust for some kind of distraction from counting bombs. Whatever it was, he squeezed her hand reassuringly and - now without restraint - the words spilled joyfully from her lips.

He tried to let the story sink in, but truthfully, literature was never something the boy could even pretend to be interested in. Instead, he listened to her voice, the familiar, lilting, unsure sound of his best friend. He loved that sound.

Her voice made the air taste like thievery, and that amazing feeling that comes with getting away with it. It was the cause for that irritating knot at the base of his stomach that always tended to tighten whenever she got too close. It was never something he could have possibly explained, like she could have done easily. The boy was never great with words. The girl was. Generally, he let her do the talking.

The silence was no longer cold; it grew warm as the fear seeped away to the dusty corner, ready for when the distraction stopped and it could return to its rightful throne. It was a thoughtful silence, one where the slightest of disturbances could have climaxed in a mess of hushing and angry whispers. Her words filled the room, reached to the far edges of the crippling anxiety and pulled at the corners of mouths like puppet strings.

A small bite of jealousy ate the boy. There was something about the way everyone suddenly seemed so appreciative of her that made him squirm uncomfortably. Whatever happened, it could only be him and her. She was his, just like he belonged to her. It had been like that since the beginning. From the first 'How about a kiss, saumensch?' to the last theft.

This was probably very selfish - and childish - of him. But it was how it always had been. Whether stealing from life or giving back to life's outcasts, there would never be anyone else. No one.

The darkness became irrelevant; there was nothing but words. That's how it always should be, if only to make her happy.

He would build a world of words for her, one day, when he was grown up. Where there were no bombs, no evil little men with quadrilateral moustaches, no fear. Just him and her and her words. It seemed like a happy life.

Soon, the words would stop. He could see by the small mound of pages left that she had already been near the end. Her voice would cease, the flow of sounds grinding to a halt like the gears in clockwork. What happened when the words stopped? They would all be swallowed by the creeping gloom, eating away at the determinedly stoic pools of eyes until there was nothing left. Just broken husks of dead hope, gazing desperately round for any scraps of encouragement they could latch onto, when there was none.

There was a general sense clinging to their bones that when the words stopped, everything would end. As long as there was the presence of a distraction, they would all be okay.

***An Observation***

**This seemed to be a custom with humans.**

**As long as there was something to hold onto,**

**they would be fine.**

**It's all lies.**

He gripped her hand tightly, willing her to continue, not daring to interrupt. Because what else was there? The boy longed for the distraction like all the others, like the girl longed to provide it. They clung onto what was offered, savouring every golden syllable as they smothered the far off heartbeat no one wanted to hear.

What was once a great country was now reduced to cowering in neighbours' basements, from their own armies, their own evil government.

Yet she was the victory among failures. She was braver than all, braver than he. She knew the words and she made them hers. And she would keep reading, _had_ to keep reading, because there was nothing else. Because if she stopped, it would end, and they would lose. They would fail.

And it was with these disturbed, unsettling thoughts that the boy fell asleep, his yellow head resting on his beautiful best friend's shoulder, lulled away by her warm voice and the promises of a paper world and the corruption of bombs.

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><p><strong>AN: I know it's pretty short, but I just wanted to do something from Rudy's point of view about when they were down in the shelter. And besides, I feel bad for not updating sooner, so I added this one on too.**


	5. Parade

**A/N: Hey guys. Sorry I've taken so long to update; there has been little to no inspiration for another chapter, so I've been experimenting a little with different ideas - none of which have worked. So bear with me.**

**Writers block sucks. Enjoy.**

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><p><strong>*One Small Fact*<strong>

**Rudy Steiner often had no idea**

**what was going through Liesel Meminger's head.**

**But this occasion ranked fairly high on his list.**

It had been a shamelessly beautiful day when it happened.

The world was clothed in glorious, golden-green summer. There was a thick, acidic blue ocean of sky stretched out lazily above Molching, a handful of white clouds scattered across like scraps of ribbon - reminding Rudy absurdly and quite painfully of his father's workshop. The trees glowed like lanterns. The grass released a pleasantly intoxicating scent.

It was the type of day that belonged to Rudy and Liesel. A day of endless, childish, most likely illegal opportunities, laid out temptingly before them, ready to be stolen from such a corrupted, grey world ruled by odd little men with moustaches. A delicious taste of freedom that he knew above all else would taste so much sweeter when combined with thievery.

It should have been that type of day. It really should have been. Another perfectly unplanned theft to satisfy their lust for a victory.

But there was something unnaturally untrustworthy about how bright and seemingly happy the day was. The sunlight grinned down on Himmel unflinchingly - that sly, raised eyebrows grin that was usually found on the likes of Victor Chemmel - as if proving it had nothing to hide.

And no day in their lives had more to hide.

Maybe if they had known the events that were yet to come, they would have proceeded with more caution. Rudy would have stayed away all together, no question, if only just to protect Liesel. But there were many, many questions that clouded his next door neighbour herself.

Would she have stayed away, to hide and shield herself from the fear and despair of the day? Even at the cost of not knowing? Or would she have fought anyway? It's likely. But Rudy wasn't to know that. In fact, there was a very, very remote chance of him foreseeing any of the next few hours.

Often I wonder how certain events in time would have altered if they had gone differently, or if they had even happened. Then there's that possibility that everything is set in place to be endured and then forgotten, dissolving into dust as the seconds pass. Not that time has ever really been any of my concern. My heartbeat is outside of time, my timeline is a circle.

But time can be unforgiving: moving forcefully forward, forcing them forward into the terrifying unknown.

It was that on that stunningly beautiful morning, that Liesel and Rudy found themselves on Munich Street, on their way to the Bürgermeister's house, another theft only just a few minutes out of their reach. They were eating up the sunlight in the meantime, because sunlight of this density and magnitude only came round every now and then.

'...and if there are any more biscuits, feel free to take those as well,' Rudy had told her, as they laid out their plan.

Liesel shook her head in impatience. 'Rudy, I don't want to steal their food. Hell, I'm not even stealing-'

'Oh, of _course. _I almost forgot. You're _borrowing_-'

'Damn straight, dumkopf. Now why don't you leave the stealing- _borrowing_ to me?'

'What, and miss out on biscuits? You must be joking.'

Liesel laughed and gave him a push that came out a little harder than intended, and he stumbled.

'All right, all right, I'm sorry,' he said, holding his hands up in surrender. 'No biscuits.'

'No biscuits,' she confirmed.

'What about cakes?'

He braced himself for another shove, maybe a punch in the arm. It never came. He looked up in confusion to find Liesel's lips parted in the indignant shape of a retort, the words - much to Rudy's surprise - seemingly frozen on the edge of her tongue. Instead, silence ruled the air. Her entire body halted, and he wondered childishly for a moment if time had stopped.

It was only then that he noticed the rusty brown pools of her eyes were not focused on him, but behind him, as if he were a piece of glass.

Two thoughts struck Rudy Steiner simultaneously. One: a brief, selfish annoyance at the fact she wasn't paying him attention. Two: a gripping, overwhelming curiosity eating at his eyes to find out what just made the the words cease on the Book Thief's lips.

He turned, following his best friend's gaze, momentarily blinded by the mockingly bright sunlight, and saw his neighbours silently lining the pavement of Munich Street like gravestones. Then he saw why.

Jews.

They came in slowly like wisps of grey clouds, without a sound of any sort, except the dull, scraping heartbeat of their marching. They had faces made of cardboard. Their clothes hung from their bones. Their eyes were like stew, cold and exhausted, a vile and messy mixture of what they once were.

I would eventually meet all those eyes one day, some sooner than later. They're souls were so heavy with haunted memories. Some would beg me to take them, and what choice would I have? They deserved release from the torturous home of concentration camps.

Rudy watched them pass by - a river of dead eyes and cracked lips - and was reminded bizarrely of paper cut-out men, similar to the ones his younger sister enjoyed making. He looked at them, a parade of paper cut-out men.

It certainly was a beautiful day for a parade.

There was something unnaturally untrustworthy about how bright and seemingly happy the day was. Now he knew why.

It was all set out according to plan. Of course it was. Signed and sealed with a neat black swastika stamped lovingly at the centre. The so-called shit of the Earth was marched to its destruction while the world smiled and shut its eyes, murmuring 'Good riddance.' Rudy wondered savagely if the planet was one large Nazi Party, life just one big piece of propaganda. It had never seemed more likely.

He watched them, the heavy defeat that imprinted the ground with each footstep, the bitter questions on their thin, pale lips that would never be answered, and he wondered why. Why them. Why those men. They had lives once. They were children once, grew up like him, ran to their mothers when they had scraped their knee.

Now they were stripped of themselves, marked and stamped with a cold, harsh number on their forearm. That's who they were now. Numbers. Not even human beings, not even those children who ran to their mothers. Just millions and millions of numbers. It was perversely like a raffle of sorts: another number marked off on the checklist once they had won the prize - me. They didn't have names anymore.

In a twist of circumstance, it could have been him, or Liesel, or his brothers and sisters. It could have been anyone, but was them, and he didn't understand why. The question bloomed in his mind like a drop of ink in water, twisting and contorting in silent anger. Why, why, why. It hurt. The questions hurt.

He could vaguely hear the disapproving murmur of his older neighbours, the silence from others. He heard a man spit out in disgust, 'What is he looking at?' He wasn't quite sure who the culprit was, but he supposed it was what they considered an insolent piece of filth.

'Me.'

The word was so quiet, so inconsequential, so nonsensical, that he almost passed it off as a fragment of a far off sentence uttered by a bystander. Almost. But the voice was too dearly familiar to ignore, and caused him to tear his eyes away momentarily to his best friend beside him.

Her rusty eyes were wide in an expression he couldn't quite place. It verged on the edge of recognition, some kind of sudden understanding, but seemed to run so much deeper, piercing her heart and cutting close to her veins. Her fingers had curled into tight fists. He was surprised to find her trembling.

'Liesel?' he said tentatively.

'He's looking for me.' Her words were little more than a whisper, flat and cold.

He looked at her in confusion, 'Who is?'

She didn't reply, her lips were imprinted with silence. 'He's looking for me,' she murmured in wonder.

'Liesel?' His voice was edged with childish fear.

One word. One word was born behind the Book Thief's teeth, and fell from her lips like a droplet of water. There were no numbers. Just one word.

'Max.'

Then there was a blur of movement beside him, a flicker of almost-German hair rippling through the air as she launched herself into the wave of dead eyes and dead hope. It was less than a moment before she had disappeared among the collection of skin and bone and stumbling feet.

***One Small Fact***

**Rudy Steiner often had no idea**

**what was going through Liesel Meminger's head.**

**But this occasion ranked fairly high on his list.**

It was that moment when Rudy's heartbeat seemed to grind down to a halt in his chest, the seconds dragging slowly like a bag of sticky cement on the ground. The scandalised buzzing of his neighbours was suddenly buried away beneath the blurred thumping of his blood rushing to his head.

'Liesel!' he called, craning his neck in an attempt to see through the paper faces.

He could just see her weaving between them, the only colour in a monochrome circus. Her lips were parted in the shape of the same word, repeated over and over again, a word she nursed lovingly like a child.

Somewhere in the sunlit crowd, there was a halt. A man stopped and looked round at her. His hair looked like a birds nest, a halo of straw coloured twigs. Rudy could only just make out his eyes, a deep swampy brown that seemed to drip like syrup.

Liesel had also stopped as her eyes met the man's. There was a moment of speechlessness, heavy silence bearing down on them like a beast. Then she ran, practically fell, into his outstretched bones and they wrapped round her. The man was twice her height but her grip was strong on him.

She pulled away and held the man's face in both hands, and Rudy was reminded with a small heartbroken pang of how she did that to him sometimes. The air between them was filled with words, thick and wonderfully bittersweet. He could see the crystal beads falling from her eyes like rain, the way the man kissed her palms as she stroked his kindling beard.

From the corner of his peripheral vision, he saw a grey uniform emerge from the oblivion of his eyelid, march toward them. The uniform grabbed Liesel and shoved her to the side of the road. She yelped in pain but pushed herself to her feet regardless. Rudy felt a small swell of pride in his chest, that was quickly overshadowed by fear. He knew she was going to push this to the very limit. His Book Thief was brave like that.

He watched as Liesel pushed her way back to the man, and walked beside him, despite the fact the man seemed to be protesting. She was speaking, the words spilling out from the confines of her throat, falling to the ground as he tried to push her away.

_There was once a strange, small man._

The uniform had appeared once more, and began making its way towards the two.

_But there was a word shaker too._

The other Jews swerved morosely around the man as he stopped and faced her, the words still being born from her lips. Tears grappled her face as she spoke them, biting the beautiful, coldly observing sky. The uniform was closer, its face contorted in fury.

'_Is it really you?' the young man asked. 'Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?'_

The world had well and truly frozen now. Rudy watched in wonder as the last of the Jews stumbled past the two, leaving them isolated in the street. The sky held its breath. The audience of onlookers watched in perversely hungry silence. They were in for a show. The final act. The uniform was a few metres away. Let it begin, they thought. He could see it in their faces. Let it begin, the Nazi sky ordered. And it began.

There was the sound of the air ripping in half as the whip sliced through it. It caught the man squarely on the side of his neck, clipping his face and leaving a deep, neat cut. Liesel stepped forward in wild defiance, the tears burning her face. The whip. The whip was walking dangerously close to her.

She wasn't moving. Oh God, she wasn't moving.

'Liesel!' he yelled in panic, trying to shove his way through the wall of shoulders, the gravestones. 'Liesel, get out of there!'

The whip cut through the air, and Rudy got one look of Liesel glancing sadly over at him, before it hit her across her shoulder blade. The uniform lifted its arm again, and again. She crumpled like paper, hitting the ground like a stone, and Rudy visibly flinched as he struggled through the crowd. There was blood reaching across the back of her beautiful neck.

Rudy burst through the clumps of spectators, their cold, curious eyes cast across the small weeping girl and the filthy, beaten Jew as he was forced onwards, most likely to his death. It was a beautiful day to die.

He fell to his knees beside her in desperation. 'Liesel, get up. Oh God, you need to get up now, please, please, please get up.'

The words were hot in his mouth like blood and they poured over her limp form. He grabbed her under her arms and attempted to drag her back to the pavement. Tommy Muller ran over to assist him, twitching unhelpfully and making her limbs shudder.

Liesel appeared to come to, as she struggled to her feet. 'Max?' she screamed. 'Max, please!'

The last of the man's heavy footsteps were disappearing on the horizon, accompanied by the harsh march of the uniform, shoving him onward. She launched herself after him once again, fighting Rudy off and tearing up the street.

He could hear the muffled crack of her bony knees as he brought her crashing down to the ground. His arms were filled with struggling, his face filled with her hair, as she writhed in his grasp for freedom. Jabs of pain littered the boy's body as she fought wildly, her fists flailing into his skin.

He took each clumsily aimed punch like a gift to his system, each scrape of her fingernails a kiss. He clung to her, his eyes clenched shut, as he rode out the storm: the violent, passionate, heartbroken storm that was Liesel Meminger. His grip did not loosen for a heartbeat as he became entangled with her in a mess of aching limbs and teeth and cries of despair mingled with hope - a very dangerous combination.

'Let me go Rudy!' she shrieked. 'Let me go, or I swear, I'll kill you.'

Her savage screams rang out into the silence as the crowd watched in frost-laden pity, in mild disapproval, as if she were an unruly animal. He wanted to scream at them, send them away, throw something - anything - to break the harsh, indifference that clouded their faces like ice. They had no right. They had no damn right.

He knew he was hurting her. He knew he was hurting in more ways that one. It killed him, knowing what he was doing to her, knowing that the cries of pain and sadness were being caused by him. She was crying now. He could feel her trembling as the sobs wracked her body.

_It's because I love you. It's because I love you. _The words rang in his head, lodged halfway in his throat, never to be released._ I hurt you because I love you._

'Rudy, please,' she whined, 'Let me go.'

Still he held on to her, holding her close, until the sound of marching dissolved into the soft summer breeze. The world was content with the show it had been given, now it had moved on in boredom, leaving the girl and the boy forgotten.

Slowly, Rudy loosened his grip on her, separating himself from the tangled knot of limbs that they had once been. They pushed themselves to their feet, dusting the gravel off their torn clothes.

He looked at her, with her bruised fists and a bleeding neck. Her face was covered in grime with race-struck tear-stains cutting through it, her watery eyes wide with questioning. It was always the same question. Why, why, why. Why did you stop me. Why wouldn't you let go.

_It's because I love you, more than you know._

The words never came. Instead, he stepped forward and pulled her into a hug, wrapping his arms carefully around her cut up shoulders. She fell into his arms in defeat, burying her face in his neck. He could feel her wet tears pressing into his skin.

'I hate you, Rudy Steiner,' she whispered.

He laid a small kiss where the whip had bitten the tender skin of her neck. 'I know.'

They stayed there, wrapped in embrace, marvelling at the remains of what could have been a victory. They had set out to steal, yet had been stolen from. He had watched as the Book Thief - his Book Thief - was taken apart and beaten and undone to her last thread. They hadn't been prepared.

She pulled away, wiping the remnants of her despair from her eyes, then looked at him solemly.

'I need to tell you something.'

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Why the actual fuck did they not include this scene in the movie? It's friggin emotional as hell and all they do is have her wander around a crowd of Jews. Stupid movie makers. Should have asked me to make the damn movie.**

**Anyway, all ranting aside, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It's not completely true to the book, but it's close enough. Please leave a review, it makes me so happy. And sorry again for the wait, I won't let it happen again.**


	6. Youth

**A/N: Hey guys. TotoroBird seems to be back in business. Huzzah!**

**Anyway, this has jumped forward several years. It's an idea I've had for a while, and I hope it goes as well as I hope it will.**

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><p>Hans grew up looking very much like his father.<p>

His bright blonde hair remained a defiant shade of lemon. His smile - once he had mastered the concept - was definitely more of a smirk than anything. Yes, Hans was certainly a lot like his father. But though the Steiner gene reigned strong in him, there was no doubt that his large round eyes of metallic brown were a gift from his mother.

Hans rarely stopped talking - or his own undeveloped, babbling version of talking that most toddlers engage in conversation with - to the point where Liesel would happily hold his lips together so that not another word could escape from behind his jagged little teeth. He was incapable of sitting still for more than fifty five seconds - a scientifically proven fact, timed by Rudy himself - and found himself constantly moving about. Liesel and Rudy would watch out the window in mild amusement as he lapped the small, stubby tree in their back yard, yelling half-formed, on-the-edge-of-recognisable words and sending a spray of dirt and triumph all over the ground.

'Look at him go,' Liesel commented.

'Yeah. Where the hell did he get the energy?' Rudy watched in surprise as he set off once again, tearing round the garden.

'Well that's certainly a familiar sight,' she pointed out thoughtfully. 'Next thing you know, he'll be stealing charcoal from the fireplace and painting himself black.'

'Very funny,' Rudy said. Then after some thought, 'Though I probably wouldn't burn any wood for a while.'

'Good plan. By the way, it's your turn to put him to bed tonight.'

'Nice try, saumensch. I did it last night.'

'Damn it.'

One of Hans' more entertaining attributes was his longing to keep his Uncle Max firmly on his toes. Liesel would turn her back for a minute, let her gaze flit away in a brief daydream, and look back to find Max laid out on the floor with an expression of utmost fear plastered to his face as Hans kneeled giggling on his chest with a collection of dead leaves from the garden spilling through his fingers over Max's head. Then Liesel would save Max from a faceful of tree carcass. Sometimes.

They would come home from work to find the two of them running round the house in various states of character, with hats and scarves and gloves strewn across their heads and odd accents and voices winding through the air. Liesel learnt long ago not to question the strange games they played during the day, nor try and hear the stories behind them, for more often than not, they made absolutely no sense. Though it didn't stop her wrapping a scarf around her face, putting on a deep growling voice and joining in herself.

Long after Liesel, Rudy and Max had exhausted all their efforts, Hans would remain, spurred on in bounds of enthusiasm and loud, often unrecognisable soliloquies - consisting of a mostly random chain of sounds.

He was a Steiner through and through. Jesse Owens in miniature, and twice as energetic. But there was a great deal of Meminger buried away under his childish face. More than either Liesel or Rudy expected.

***Hans Steiner's First Word***

**Book**

As Hans' speech and vocabulary began to grow, it became a common occurrence that Liesel often found a small, inch wide gap between the books that resided on her bookshelf. As her fingers played the rough, colourful spines of her collection like piano chords, each one another key in her personal symphony, she'd find a wrong note, where her fingers would slip and miss.

This was the alarm bell, now weathered and rusty with overuse, that would cause her eyes to roll, her head to shake in affectionate irritation, and send her following a trail of small muddy footprints leading out of her and Rudy's bedroom.

She would find him invariably curled up and buried under his duvet, his little fingernails following the black ink markings as they scattered across the page like seeds in a snowy white field. His eyes would soak up the words, pick them up and weigh them in his fingers like delicious penny sweets his father would bring home for him sometimes.

He would look up at her, rich brown eyes wide with an unbearably adorable mixture of fear and guilt - that unconsciously smug expression of sheepishness that she had originally thought only Rudy could ever be able to achieve.

Usually, she would give him a cocked-eyebrow expression that clearly stated 'hand it over' and he would sulkily push the book, eyes tinged with mutiny, into her outstretched hand. But as her books continued to go missing over the next few months, stolen by the tiny hands of a thief, she decided to ask him the question. The questions she had been asked at the age of nine by her son's beloved namesake.

'Do you know what they say?' she asked one morning, pointing to the pretty signs imprinted on the paper.

Hans shook his head mutely, clutching the book in curling, grubby fingers.

She knelt down beside his bed so that their identical eyes were level and smiled. 'Do you want to know what they say?'

Hans' eyes widened in elation and he squeaked out a little, 'Ja.'

Liesel grinned and sat down on his mattress, pulling him onto her knee and opening the book. And this was how the Book Thief's son learnt to read.

Reading with her son was possibly only moment of stolen piece, the only moment that Hans would actually shut up. He broke the record for sitting still by several minutes - again, a scientifically proven fact, timed by Rudy himself.

He would eat up the words as they expanded and grew meaning, blooming and unfurling like flowers before his eyes. Liesel would watch his eyebrows join together in a frown as the sounds rolled tentatively off his tongue, falling into his lap. And she would smile as the nostalgia unfolded about her, as she saw herself at nine years old sat in the basement, a book lying open in her lap while she tested the words on her lips.

It would always begin with a theft. There was never an occasion where Liesel would have to lift her son up so he could pick out a book on a higher shelf. There was never a day when Liesel got an insight on what they were to be reading before they read it. No, it always - and most likely would always - begin with a theft.

And truthfully, Liesel let it. Whenever she found that gap in her stories, that missing note in her tune, she felt a small, golden sense of pride swelling up beneath her ribcage like a song squeezed out between the smiling teeth of accordion bellows. It clung to her heart like cement, in the way that maternal love tends to do.

The Steiners could claim this boy as their own all they wanted, and he would fit right in. But there was a great deal of Meminger weaving through his veins.

He was her own little Book Thief.

And so, at the age of four, as Liesel and Rudy watched him march solemnly into Kindergarten on his chubby little legs, they weren't wholey surprised that he had a book clutched to his chest.

***The Book He Brought With Him***

**Mein Kampf**

**Otherwise known as**

**The Stand-Over Man**

'Come on, let's go home,' Liesel mumbled, hastily wiping her eyes after they watched their son submerge into a pool of grinning children.

They headed back to their house, contentedly observing as the last of the summer bled into another crisp Autumn. Rudy unlocked the door and they stood on the threshold of their home, suddenly filled with a sense of emptiness as the silence swallowed them up.

'It's so quiet,' she said in mild wonder.

'Because that damn kid never shuts up,' Rudy pointed out, 'I don't think I've heard proper silence in four years.'

'I don't doubt it.' They shut the door and headed into the living room where Liesel dropped into a chair. 'I can't believe he's started kindergarten. Last time I checked, he was coming out of me.'

'What a day that was,' Rudy grinned nostalgically.

'Says you, saukerl. You buggered off halfway through then came back at the very end.'

'And yet, I regret nothing,' he said with finality. Liesel laughed.

They looked at each other and smiled sheepishly. 'Well, we have the house to ourselves for the first time in years. I have the day off from the bookshop. What do you want to do?' she asked.

'I dunno. What the hell do we do with ourselves now that the mini canon ball has gone?'

'Now there's a good question,' Liesel said slowly.

'I feel old.'

'Rudy, we're twenty eight. That's not old,' she informed him.

He shrugged. 'I _feel_ old. I never said we _were_ old.'

Liesel sat up suddenly in her seat, a glint blooming in her rust-ridden eyes. There was a small dent curving out of nowhere in the straight, slightly bored line of her mouth.

'You feel old?' she enquired.

'A little,' he said, a tad defensively.

A sly smile formed on her lips. 'Oh really?' She pushed herself up from her seat and took a step towards him.

'Really,' he replied.

Obviously, he hadn't caught the hint; instead, it floated round his ears then fell to the ground, as insubstantial as feathers.

'I bet I-' She took another step, '-can prove you wrong.' One more step and she was only a mere few centimetres away from him. This time, the hint hit him square in the face and understanding dawned on his features.

'And how would you do that?' he asked with a smirk, cocking his head to the side a little.

'I think you know,' she smiled sweetly.

'I think I do know,' he conceded.

He leant forward a little, so that his mouth only just grazed the rough, delicate skin of her lips. Then he whispered, making deliberately sure that every word that rolled off his tongue dripped down her throat and into her lungs:

'Let's go steal some apples.'

Liesel grinned. 'Hell yeah.'

Gripped with sudden energy, they bounded into the hallway, dragged on their jackets and headed out of the door and into the street.

'Herr Schneider's place?' Rudy called over his shoulder to her as she locked the door.

'Where else?'

He grinned and let her weave her arm through his. They began to walk slowly, in a pointedly casual manner, down the street, towards the man's house, all the while trying to avoid cracking into mischievous grins.

***A Few Facts About Arnold Schneider***

**+ He was a retired accountant**

**+ He was an avid supporter of the Nazi Party**

**+ He disliked Jews with a passion**

**+ He enjoyed walking his two terriers around the block**

**+ He owned a glorious orchard**

Herr Schneider was generally disliked in the Steiner household for his blatant distaste for Max's visits. On his many shuffling endeavours out into the street with his two old, yapping atrocities, he would mutter mutinously whenever Max was in his line of sight, sometimes calling out various Nazi propaganda abuses - usually along the lines of 'scum' and 'lousy sympathisers' and 'in my day'. Rudy would then restrain Liesel from calling back. Sometimes.

'Oh yeah?' she would yell. 'I bet you'd love to hear that he hid in my basement for years, and your precious party never found him!'

Generally, this would result in more angry muttering and filthy glares thrown at the three of them. Sometimes, Hans would join in with his mother's defiance, yelling nonsensical words that didn't quite reach any meaning, but the anger was there and easy enough to distinguish. Then, as he got older, and the sounds began to form some kind of recognition, it was always along the lines of, 'Leave Uncle Max alone!'

That child was definitely their's.

Liesel and Rudy headed up the road, their eyes roaming the houses for any onlookers, though I doubt it would have made much of a difference. They were out to steal apples. They were out to steal back their youth.

Herr Schneider's house was a papery grey square that sat, squat and squalid, at the end of the street, like an overturned sack of thick cement. The little front garden was also square, neatly sliced down to sharp, grim perpendicular angles. It gave the overall impression of someone who had just spilled a geometry set all over the floor and hadn't been bothered to pick it up.

The two of them swerved in a fairly conspicuous manner into the alleyway running along side the man's house. Their pace had unconsciously sped up in giddy excitement. Liesel could hear her heartbeat drumming away in her ribcage.

The orchard was a golden, rosy red affair, bound by a fence of thick, grey wire. Apples hung from the branches of pale green covered oak like baubles. The leaves glowed in the sunlight, murmuring tuneless, rustling monologues in the afternoon breeze.

Liesel dragged Rudy down into a crouch behind a row of bushes that lined the foot of the fence. They gazed through the leaves at the back window of the house that overlooked the orchard.

'There he is,' Rudy murmured, pointing towards the hunched figure just visible through the glass.

'That bastard,' she muttered, glaring at the man as he sat gazing sourly out at the trees.

'We need a plan of some sort,' Rudy said in a low voice.

'Rudy, when have we _ever_ had a plan?'

'Well, if you hadn't noticed, we're a tad bigger than we were at twelve. It needs more thinking through.'

'I never thought I'd see the day when you actually thought things through-'

'Oh very funny. But seriously, don't you want to plot it out?'

'What's to plot? We get in, take some apples, and get out. There you go.'

Rudy looked like he was about to argue, when the muffled yet distinct sound of barking dogs brought their attention back to the house. Liesel didn't know much about dogs per say, but barking could only mean a few things. Food, intruders, or walk. She hoped very much that it was the last one.

'Here's our chance,' she murmured, as Schneider disappeared from sight, advancing in a crouch to the fence.

'Now?' he exclaimed incredulously. 'Why now?'

'Because his back is turned, you dipshit. Now come here and boost me up.'

She saw a grin curving on his lips, despite himself, and she knew that it was mirrored by her own. He walked forward and knelt down, cupping her foot in his hands and shoving her upward into the air so that she swung her leg over the fence and jumped down. A moment later and he had climbed the fence himself, leaping to the ground beside her.

'We need to be quick,' she said, keeping her eyes locked to the window.

'Oh really? I thought we might invite him to have a picnic with us,' came his sarcastic reply, and she bit down on a retort swelling up in her throat. There were more important matters to deal with.

Keeping the window forever present at the edge of their peripheral vision, they headed for a tree each and began tugging the lush, Autumnal apples from their nest of golden-green leaves. The barking seemed to be growing fainter, and she couldn't tell if this was a good sign or not: whether it ended in an empty house or the reappearance of their antagonist was not necessarily clear, but she sped up all the same, filling her pockets with whatever she could fit in.

'Liesel, he's coming back,' Rudy's voice came from behind her, the words hitting her across the shoulder, and she looked up to see a figure moving about within the living room.

Immediately, they ducked down where they stood, staying close to the trees in the hopes that they might just get away without detection.

'How do we get out?' she whispered fiercely across to him.

'I dunno,' he whispered back. 'Jump the fence, I guess.'

She peeked out from behind her tree, and instantly ducked behind it again, but not before she had made eye contact with the Herr Schneider, stood looking out suspiciously at the tree. His eyes widened in fury and he began to shuffle out the room.

'Shit.'

'_Shit_.'

The back door seemed to be in the process of being unlocked. Rudy held out his hand to her and she ran for it as panic grappled her thoughts. He hurriedly knelt down and boosted - practically threw - her up once again. She tumbled over the top of the fence, landing at an awkward angle and sending a stab of icy, sharp pain up her heel. A moment later, Rudy had climbed over the fence himself.

'Come on!' he cried, and Liesel stumbled achingly to her feet.

They began to run, apples spilling from their pockets like blood, as the door flew open and the middle aged man came storming out. She caught one last glimpse of Arnold Schneider following them with his outraged grey eyes before they slid out of view and had reached the street again. She could still hear his gruff, angry voice mingling with the trees.

And then she could hear Rudy's laughter, ringing out in the air as the wind rushed wonderfully past them. Her feet pounded the ground in time with the wild beat of her heart. The warm September air tore in half as they ran, pushing aside the cool breeze. Her only distinguishable thought in the mess and jumble of emotions battling out in her mind was the image of her and Rudy, at the dawn of their teenage years, also running for their lives with armfuls of apples.

They had done it. They had stolen back their youth.

'Victory!' Rudy yelled in triumph, sweeping Liesel up off her feet and spinning her round so that she laughed in a daze of giddy euphoria.

He leaned in, catching her lips mid-laugh so that it fizzed and spilled over his mouth, tasting gloriously of thievery and apples. She wrapped her arms around his neck, grinning into his mouth, and knowing that it was his own grin that was imprinted on her lips. He released her, setting her back to her feet, and they gazed at each other, basking in the glory of their triumph and the delicious sense of daring that came with it.

'So do you still feel old?' she asked with a smile, her arms still draped around his neck.

'Not in the least,' he said, punctuating each word with a kiss.

'Good. I knew I could prove you wrong,' she said.

He grinned down at her, 'Yes, dear.'

She aimed a small slap upside his head. Then sobriety bloomed on her features and she looked up at him.

'Well, I guess now is as good as any time,' she muttered to herself.

'What is it?' Rudy looked endearingly confused and she swallowed the smile that threatened to resurface.

Her rusty brown eyes met his icy blue and held them. 'I have to tell you something.'

'Liesel?'

She took a deep breath, as if hoping to fill her lungs with courage for the words which would no doubt alter their lives yet again.

'Rudy, I'm sort of pregnant.'

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So I hope you enjoyed it, I had a lot of fun writing it, especially the beginning as it was good to expand young Hans' character, and truthfully, I'm glad it worked out as well as I intended.**

**Please review, thanks for sticking with me this long and, as always, thanks for reading.**


	7. Loss

**A/N: Hey guys. This chapter is going to be pretty angsty and is set a few years after Youth, so brace yourselves, it's going to be dark as hell.**

**Just so you know, this is practically in two halves. One: Death and Liesel. Two: Rudy and Liesel. So this isn't exactly going to be a picnic.**

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><p><strong>*One Small Fact*<strong>

**I may have before mentioned that I truly dislike the colour white.**

**This is why.**

The sky was dripping.

It was one of those occasions where the world plays tricks on you. When the sky is an ocean of sunlight and rain and colour after colour, mingled together so that you can't tell one from the other.

Damp, grey clouds fill the air while the sun paints them darker, a mess of gold-brown-grey, light bursting and spilling out from the cracks in the cement sky. It's like a canvas of watercolour: one drop of rain could send all these brushes of silver, gold and grey cascading out of balance, revealing a glorious spectrum of blues and pinks and yellows.

It's the type of day I relish. The type of day I could just wrap myself in. A beautiful day to live. A beautiful day to die.

But I can't say I'm smiling.

The Book Thief certainly isn't smiling.

And it's partly my fault.

There she is. Sat in her bedroom, in the centre of the large bed she shares with Rudy. Her eyes are glazed over and metallic, watching the rain make pretty patterns with the sunlight on the window. Shadows of crystal raindrops are scattered over the floor, over the bed, over every surface the dark light reaches. They litter her face, cast across the rusty pools of her eyes, and they divide her features into fragments, like cracked glass.

She looks broken. She _is_ broken. Her life lies in pieces around her, a corner of her having been torn off and shattered in recent events. Her fingers reach for the pieces - maybe she can put it back together - but they dissolve like dust in her hands. So instead, they knot in the tangled bed sheets beneath her, for something to hold onto. Because if there's nothing to hold onto, how does she know she's still there?

And deep, deep down - buried beneath her lungs and protected by her ribcage where it grows and evolves by day - is the hope that she's not still there. That none of it's real.

It was very real, however. I was there. I stood in the middle of it, my hands outstretched. It's my job after all.

***Forty Two Hours Prior***

**We find ourselves again in a hot, white room.**

**Liesel is on her back, her knees to her chest,**

**in another intense battle with her own body.**

**The pain is worse than it's ever been.**

**A nurse is shaking her head.**

From the beginning, something was wrong.

It hadn't been nine months. It had only been eight. For the last two occasions, she was always a week or two late. This time, she was a month early.

_May 23rd was a still night, the type of night that could be likened to a sheet of cool, clear glass stretching across the world from horizon to horizon. The sky was unburdened by clouds; the stars were stripped of any cover and were exposed, drowned in a sea of deep blue velvet darkness. The air was concrete, frozen over with delicately intricate webs of frost, biting at the edges of windows and laying kisses at the corners of the metal fences that ensnared houses like cages._

_The silence was shattered as the whining scream of a white vehicle tearing through the cold, spring night - KRANKENWAGON stamped in bold red letters across the front and back. It wove, wailing desperately through the streets, hurtling towards the small, German suburban house where she resided._

_The vehicle screeched to a halt outside the house. The door opened and a man got out and walked towards the front door of the house. The window is open - a stupid idea on such a cold, quiet night - and he can hear loud groans from inside, the panicked yell of a man, and the sleepy questions of two, maybe three, children. His fist raised and knocked on the door._

_I stood in the shadows and watched as the door was wrenched open by the man in his early thirties with lemon yellow hair, which was currently sticking out at odd angles in a mix of insomnia and fear. Some formal, yet strained, words were exchanged between the two men, then the latter turned and disappeared back into the house, reappearing a moment later with a woman about the same age, her almost-blonde hair falling over her face as one hand gripped her husband, the other gripping her swollen belly._

_I knew this girl. I knew the boy too. I knew them as children. I knew them as adults. They knew me too. We have known each other for so many years, sometimes by choice, sometimes not. _

_And though I couldn't necessarily determine the reason why I was here tonight, why I was being drawn to the woman, I hoped that it wasn't her. Maybe that was selfish - and it most likely was - but it couldn't be her._

_The woman staggered out of the house, being held up by the man with lemon hair, breathing heavily under the weight of her stomach. She stumbles, nearly falls, and winces in pain, and her husband catches her, murmuring words to her. She looks afraid, but the man kisses her cheek and helps her into the back of the vehicle. _

_Two children are stood at the door: a boy and a girl. The boy looks a lot like the man and looks seven to eight years old. His rusty brown eyes are wide in anxiety, an expression so reminiscent of his mother that I have to catch another glance of the woman to see if it is in fact the same face. The girl beside him is half his size, and, by the looks of it, half his age. Her hair is wild and half-blonde, like her mother's, her eyes icy blue and barely open, glued together with sleep. Her brother holds her up by her small chubby hand, and nudges her every now and then to rouse her._

_The white doors are closed, and the man walks to the front seat of the vehicle and gets in. He looks sadly out at the lemon haired man and his two children - as he whispers small comforts to them, tells them that their mother is going to be fine, that their uncle is going to pick them up - and he thinks that this can only have one ending. He and I both know the ending. I wish I didn't._

_The vehicle drives away and I follow it. The woman inside is laid on a stretcher in the back of the vehicle clutching her bump, groaning as a gripping pain blossoms in her abdomen, flooding her veins and unfurling in her blood like ink in water. Her breathing is coming in short rasps. Oxygen suddenly seems to retreat from her, withering in her lungs and leaving her breathless._

_The minutes drip into one another, slowly and sweetly, smiling down upon the woman as she writhes in agony, holding her stomach in desperation. She's done this before. Twice. But it's never been this intense. It's never hurt like this._

_They reach the hospital and she is rushed in. Her screams paint the walls black as the wildly tender aching waves crumble through her bones. There is a terribly familiar rush between her thighs and she cries out in fear. It can't be happening. It just cannot be happening. It had only been eight months._

_She is laid down on a hospital bed. Nurses and doctors flood the room like insects, buzzing and fluttering about. The woman wanted to throw something at them, yell at them to get out and shut the hell up - typical of her - but another wave of crippling pain strangled a cry of anguish out of her. Her chest feels like it's going to snap in two, like she'll be impaled on her own heaving ribs._

_Let it begin, the Nazi sky ordered. Let it begin._

_The hours drag by, tearing her to pieces, minute by minute. Each wave leaves enough time to recover, enough time to build herself up before she must inevitably fall, break into more fragments, then repeat. Her breaths are ripped from her throat with the force of a beast._

_Her skin crumbles with sweat, her knees once again are shoved up to her chest as she struggles with her own body, her own flesh and blood mutinous beneath her. Her fingernails bury deep into her thighs, and there's beads of blood at the conjunction between teeth and bottom lip. She can taste the crimson salt leaking onto her tongue, and it burns her throat, as she screams out._

_'It's coming.'_

_There they are again. Those wonderful, wonderful words. This is the third time they've graced her thoughts, smoothing over the pain like snow. __It's coming, it's coming, it's coming. _

_But there was something wrong, something disturbingly haunting about harshness that laced the nurse's words like frost. The woman's eyes slid open a little and looked at the nurse who stood between her thighs, her head shaking mournfully._

_She didn't understand. Why was she shaking her head? It's coming! Finally. I watched as her expression darkened: from relief to confusion. And something else._

_Her dangerous metallic eyes grew sharp, a glint of paralysing fear dawning in the rusty bronze pools like lightning struck water. They flit over the grim, grey faces of the doctors and nurses around her and it hits her with the force of a punch to the gut__. Something's wrong. Something's wrong._

_She tries to sit up, but the nurses push her back into the bed. She demands to know what's going on; they turn away without an answer to give. She drags the hair from her eyes, trying to see what was occurring beneath her. The colour she sees is red._

_It's coming. Oh God, it's coming._

_And then her body was spiralling out of control, down into another storm, another battle ripping through her system. It shatters her, dragging the screams from her lungs, and she's left helpless, crying out for her husband. His name slips from her lips in a cracked glass whimper as she collapses back into the bed._

_It wracks her body, sending her into wild contortions. The nurses rush around in panic, and her screaming fills the air. __Her insides clench painfully and there is the familiar slippery rush between her thighs. _

_And then it is over. _

_Silence crumples over the room like a slab of silk, slipping over the walls and dragging down any sounds clinging to the walls. The woman sinks back into her pillows, eating up the oxygen as it grazes her cheek. She doesn't notice me._

_I step forward. I pick up the baby - a small bloody mound of soft, tender flesh and toothpick bones. She sleeps in my arms, peaceful and light. One of those wonderful souls that don't come struggling, but simply drift into my outstretched hands. I look down at her face, the tiny, scrunched up features and the finely detailed piano key ribs that protrude from her thin, weak chest._

_She is so little, so insignificant, yet a beautiful soul to hold, and I find myself rocking her a little in my cold, dead arms. Sadness drifts through my bones, like a flurry of rain. I shouldn't be the one holding her; it should be her mother. She isnt the first to hold her daughter. I am. And I am the last._

_I look over at the woman. She has painstakingly sat up, questions leaving her her lips, over and over, to ears that are determinedly not hearing her. She can see them carrying away her baby, and she's asking them why. She tries to get to her feet, but her limbs ache and she collapses back into the bed. She doesn't understand. _

_The doctor is taking her baby out of the room, and she yells at him to bring her back. She struggles to sit up, shouting and crying out for her child. The nurses rush to her side, a thousand hands restrain her as she thrashes out, screaming in fury and grief._

_There is a constant murmur of small comforts from either side of her like the insistent buzz of pesky insects. Her fists flail out in a passionate anger, and her wrists are caught by a strong grip. Her head whips round, ready to hurt, ready to maim, ready to goddamn murder if she could only see her child, and finds herself facing her husband._

_A brief, deliciously sweet relief washes over her as her dried-sweat fingers reach out to touch his face. But his face is wet with tears that cling to his cheeks. She doesn't know why. Then the panic set in again, and she struggles to get out of the bed, launching herself towards the door where her baby had disappeared. The man caught her, dragging her back into the bed, stroking her hair and holding onto her for dear life like he has so many times in the past. He frantically murmurs words into her ear as she cries out, begging them to bring her back, to let her have her child._

_But now it's no longer them she addresses. She addresses me, and only me. She asks why I took her, why I took her baby, her flesh and blood. But I am not equipped for those questions. Her wails ring out in the deafening silence. She weeps for her lost one, and I am so sorry, ever so sorry, that it's me rocking the girl, and not her. That I stole the her daughter away from her. _

_And her wild cries of anguish are the last thing I hear as I carry the little girl's soul away, and all I can see is white. The colour of lost innocence and dying children._

***One Small Fact***

**I may have mentioned that I truly dislike the colour white.**

**This is why.**

Fresh, salty tears spilled from Liesel's eyes, and she could taste them on her lips. Her fingers moved slowly from the knotted bed sheets to her bump, now a lot smaller but not completely gone, the incriminating evidence of her failure. Of her loss.

Her face looked like the sky, pale and heavy with rain. Her eyes never left the veins etched on the glass pane from the precipitation racetracks. The grief lies dying in her chest, rotting and dissolving to dust as her body shut down on itself. No food had touched her throat in days. She had had no contact with water, nor had she washed. Her skin still tasted of harsh disinfectant and sweat. She smelt of white.

But most prominently, her lips were dry of words. None had been grown from her tongue like flowers since the screaming ended. Not a sound had escaped her exhausted lungs, torn and rusted with her cries. It wasn't the first time she had forgotten how to speak.

There was the first time her feet met with the hard, concrete ground of Himmel, when her eyes still ached with the absence of her mother; there was the dusty tears spilt over carcass of her home after it rained bombs and snowed ash, and Himmel was no more; and there was now.

By no means was this the first time.

But it didn't make it hurt less.

The air was filled with the unholy, harsh stench of white. It emanated from her like light, and hatred bloomed in her, burning in her chest. She hated herself. She hated that smell. It clung to her bones, sticky and clean and blank and it destroyed her from the inside, eating her away. The colour of lost innocence and dying children.

There was no Liesel anymore. Just white.

The urge to destroy that heavy scent pieced her heart, tangled in her ribs, overwhelmed her, and she found herself sliding off the bed and stumbling to her feet. Her legs were unsteady beneath her from disuse, and she staggered into the wall and slid down to the floor. A groan of frustration bubbled through her blood, and she reached up, digging her sparse fingernails into the chipped, painted windowsill as she dragged herself back up.

She took a minute to regain her breath, clutching the windowsill for support, her forehead resting against the cool, sky-stained glass. Then she let go, letting her feet work upon instinct. It was oddly humiliating, trying to remember how to walk, and she was glad Rudy wasn't around to watch it.

She fell from one ledge to another, gripping the doorframe with both hands. Her fingers fumbled with the doorknob and she pulled the door open. She headed into the hallway, stumbling through the half light. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and she made her way slowly, but surely towards it, silent fury pulsing through her.

It was following her everywhere. The more it stung her lips and grazed her skin, the more anger she felt towards herself, and this stupid world. She had to get it off her, if it was the last thing she did. The door to the bathroom fell open as she barged through it, slamming into the porcelain sink and hearing the distinct crack of open of her ribs.

She fell to the floor, clutching her side as a pained moan slipped from her throat, yet once again, she reached up to the smooth basin and hauled herself up. As she filled her thirsty lungs, she caught sight of herself in the mirror a over the sink.

Her half-blonde hair was a tangled mess of wisps and knots, matted and unwashed for days. Large, black crescent moons laced the edges of her wide, rust-filled eyes. Her lips were cracked and pale. She looked quite demented, her face filled with grief - the same face of the fourteen year old girl as her world fell apart around her.

She glared at her reflection in pure, unrestrained hatred. Such a pathetic wretch, staring back at her, stealing her eyes and her mouth and her nose and wearing them herself as if she owned them. They were identical in everything, from the anger that burned more brightly with every scrape of oxygen right down to the small bump protruding from under the skin of her stomach.

How dare she. How dare she claim that child, that beautiful child she never got to meet, as her own. The fingers that gripped the edges of the basin, as they curled into pale fists, moved protectively to her swollen belly. The girl in the mirror mimicked her.

_There's nothing there._

She knew there was nothing there. She knew there was nothing there. But it didn't stop her clutching her stomach as if there was a child in her arms. As if she had lived. As if her baby hadn't gone from her grasp before she could hold her.

_There's nothing there._

She heard the words leave her identical antagonist's lips. She saw them steam up the glass. And she found her heart pounding with rage.

How dare she. How _dare_ she.

_There's nothing there._

With a horrible scream of fury, her fist flew at the identical girl, shattering her face into a thousand pieces. She could see hundreds of fragmented metallic eyes glaring at her from the spiderweb glass, and she slammed her crimson knuckles back into her döppelganger's hateful broken gaze. Another shriek of wild, heartbroken anger was spat into the pieces of reversed bathroom that littered the floor.

'How dare you?' she screeched, blood dribbling down her hands and falling in beads onto the tiles like rose petals. They made pretty patterns on the floor. 'How dare you?'

She sank to her knees, surrounded by herself, in a pool of her own blood and reflection. Sharp glass sliced through her skin, burying beneath her flesh as she wept, as she wept for the piece of her that she had lost. That had broken from her, just like the mirror. Her trembling fingers reached for the pieces of glass, the fragments of her life, trying to find her baby. Where had that girl taken her? Where did she take her daughter to? But with every piece of mirror, she found the girl, staring back at her in panic, tear drops staining the glass as they fell from her eyes.

She let out a long, heartbroken cry, collapsing onto the ground as she held the remainder of her child in both hands, rocking back and forth. The last thing she remembered as the darkness swallowed her eyes was the sound of the door flying open and her name repeated over and over in panic.

***On May 25th, 1961***

**The Book Thief lies passed out on her bathroom floor.**

**I had the choice to take her then.**

**It probably would have been the right thing to do.**

**Merciful, even.**

**But I suppose I am a coward when it comes to these things.**

Liesel's eyes slid open to a warm, dark room. She was laid on her bed, curled up on her side. She looked around in confusion then winced in pain as the side of her face brushed against the duvet. She forced herself into a sitting position, her fingers creeping up to touch her cheek. Slicing across her skin was a long, thin gash, and she gasped as she looked around for a mirror of some kind - because that was obviously a very good idea, considering.

She didn't quite know what was going on, how she got here, nor how much time had passed. Her eyes struggled to reach the sky with as little movement as possible and saw that it was still dripping but was a deep watery violet, stretched across the world like a brush of watercolour. She stayed there for several minutes, just gazing at the beautiful, beautiful sky.

The door opened and she turned her head, albeit awkwardly, to see Rudy stood in a corridor of light.

There was a word. An insignificant, one-syllabled, three-letter word. But she knew it well, wonderfully, painfully well. It was the word that pulled her into the strong arms of the Amper River; the word that dragged her out of the bones of her former home; the words that filled the air after their first night together. It was a word that meant nothing to everyone else. Everything to them.

'Hey.'

But it was the voice she loved dearly.

'Hey.'

Rudy looked like he might smile, his mouth balancing on the edge of a small grin, but he refrained, and stepped forward.

'There's a bath ready for you,' he said.

She looked up at him, then down at her hands, which were painted with dried blood. She looked more closely; she hadn't noticed her crimson fingers. Her breath caught in her throat in fear, as she tried to discern a source of the blood.

Suddenly, Rudy stood there, right in front of her. He took her hands in his, and pulled her to her feet.

'Come on,' he said gently.

He helped her out of the bedroom as she stumbled along. They reached the hallway after ragged progress, and he led her into the bathroom. Her blood had been cleaned from the tiles. The glass shards had disappeared. Aside from the lack of a mirror above the sink, there was no evidence to suggest that she had ever been in there.

He closed the door, and began to carefully and silently tug clothing off her. She stood, in a soft, sad silence, as Rudy removed layer after layer, tossing each garment to the floor where they lay despondently. Minutes drifted by as she was slowly and sweetly taken apart, a look of deep concentration on Rudy's face that she wanted to lean forward and kiss.

Soon, she stood naked before him, the marks exposed and vulnerable, and she trembled a little, as her legs began to give way. He took her hand and helped her into the tub of warm water. Her skin stung a little as she sank down through the glassy surface, a long breath she didn't know she's been holding in was released slowly from her parted lips.

Rudy picked up a washcloth and began wiping the red stains from each finger. She watched in silence as he cleaned the cuts on her palms, her wrists, and her forearms. The cloth then travelled up to her face, where he carefully dabbed at her slashed cheek. There were more scars than she thought as he cleaned each in turn.

A wince was caught in her lungs as he passed over one that rested at her hairline. He leaned forward and kissed it, and her eyes slid closed. Blood twisted and contorted in the liquid, blooming like flowers. She twirled a wisp of it around her finger and it melted away. The water was an odd, cloudy pink colour.

Her eyes came up to meet his and there was so much tenderness visible beneath the surface of the icy blue pools that she reached one hand up to touch his face. He kissed her damp fingers, one by one.

Then he stood up, and helped her struggle to her feet. She clutched onto his forearms as she climbed out of the bath tub. She stood, unsteady on her feet, as her skin dripped. Rudy picked up a towel, and began to dry her off. He ran the towel through her hair, then across her neck, then her shoulders, then each arm. She yelped in pain as the rough material grazed over the bumps and crevices of her scars.

'Sorry,' he mumbled sheepishly.

Liesel did not reply; her fingers had once again slid down to her bump, the ghosting of a child that was once there, proof of her emptiness. Her eyes shut to contain the tears that threatened to spill. She felt another pair of hands cover her own, and she looked up to see Rudy gazing down at her swollen belly, his eyes watery. Another frosty pang of sadness wove through her ribs, clenching her insides.

'I lost her, Rudy,' she whispered. 'I lost her.'

A sob was released from behind her teeth, and she buried her face in her hands. Tears seeped through her fingers, dripping onto the floor. Her weeping painted the walls, as he continued to dry her skin. She felt Rudy wrap the towel around her torso, then she had the vague sensation of being lifted up, and carried like a child. She curved into his neck, as he took her away from the bathroom, through the darkened hallway, and back into the bedroom.

He sat her down at the centre of the bed where she curled up once again, her metallic gaze forever unconsciously seeking a piece of sky. It was dark outside, like someone had spilled a bottle of thick, dark blue ink across a page of rain. The clouds had cleared, drifted away like forgotten words, and had left a scattering of stars exposed in their wake.

A beautiful day to live. A beautiful day to die.

Liesel felt Rudy's arms wrap around her from behind as he cradled her, his chin resting on her shoulder, and the tears fell silently from between her eyelids. She was too exhausted to cry; her body did the work for her.

'I lost her,' she murmured, her eyes filled with the warm dark sky.

'I know,' he said simply, pressing his lips to her neck.

'Why did I lose her?' The question stung the air, filled it, reached to the very corners of the room. And there were no answers.

'These things happen, Liesel,' he replied quietly. 'We can always try again.'

'But what if I can't?' She turned to face him, her dangerous brown gaze demanding, her hoarse voice was bitten by passion. 'What if this has fucked me up and I can't conceive anymore?'

His hands crept up and held her face. 'I'll love you anyway, saumensch.'

'Oh Rudy,' she said softly.

He leaned forward and caught her lips between his own. Her fingers rose and wound into his lemon hair - the first thing she caught sight of when he re-emerged, clothed in December, from the black marble oblivion of the river. He still tasted remarkably of Rudy Steiner, that idiot boy who would paint himself for the glory of impersonating a black man. She could still find a hint of some forgotten triumph, a shard of dusty victory stuck to his lips. He tasted of apples.

He pulled away achingly softly, and pulled her down with him into the bed, where they lay side by side, facing each other. Her hands sought his own, somewhere among the tangled duvet, and clung on. In the end though, several inches apart was a little too much, and Rudy pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her. She could feel his slow breathing against her neck. She tucked into his throat, and laid a small kiss there.

Sleep came to fetch them eventually, filling them with deliciously sweet release, a warm, black oblivion wrapping round them like a blanket. And Liesel tumbled into a hazy dream where she played with her _all_ of her children. All three of them, squealing and laughing and running with abandon.

Even her youngest daughter. Her beautiful baby girl with dangerous, rusty eyes.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So yeah... Pretty angsty right? What inspired me to write this stuff, I'll never know, but now that it's done, tah dah.**

**I never intended it to be this long, so you know. But I'm pretty proud of this so please leave a review and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading!**

**(By the way, I'll probably be changing the rating to M soon, due to language and themes. And also the fact there is a smut chapter ready to post at some point. Just so you know.)**


	8. Bouquet

**A/N: Hey guys. Thank you FandomThief for the suggestion of a wedding (I know it was a while ago but it was bound to happen sooner or later). I hope you like it.**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

><p><strong>*April 8th, 1949*<strong>

**The day Meminger officially became Steiner.**

**But it wasn't necessarily the first time.**

The evening sky was a bouquet of white, billowing roses.

It was an ugly sky, a beautifully intricate scattering of grey, polluted petals. Ribbons of pale silver looped across the blank canvas. Excessively delicate. Ridiculously extravagant. Ironically reminiscent of the gathering of wild flowers woven in between Liesel's fingers as she looked up at her wedding day sky.

It had stretched across the hours, colourless and sweet like fondant icing. It had kissed her eyes from the brush of dawn, eating up the seconds painfully quickly in the hopes of pleasing. But she wanted this day to last as long as she could cling on to it, let the white swallow her up. White everywhere. White everywhere.

I'm not personally a fan of white - but that's a different story.

It was almost like a gift of sorts - a peace offering. A plea for forgiveness from a once corrupted, now redeemed planet. The world was lifting the white flag to her lips, cleaning the blood from her shattered teeth, apologising for the bruises, the scars and the general repeated punches to the gut that it had so gleefully inflicted years before. She let it, a dull, throbbing mutiny weaving in her veins and beating in her chest as it caressed her cheek and crooned sympathies in its tuneless, rustling voice. She let it because she needed it as her ally.

Friend? By no means. The world had given up the concept of friendship when it plucked her loved ones from her as carelessly as the rose petals that littered the sky above her. But ally? Yes, she could be persuaded to allow it that.

And so this sky, this wonderful, hideously treacherous sky, had given her away, led her down the aisle, painted the world white just for her, as she married her best friend.

She sat in a small pool of leaf bones, her first - and most likely last - pair of high heels discarded a few feet away from her bare feet, laid incriminstingly on their side like corpses. Her dress lay spread around her, mingling with the earth, imprinting the material with her footsteps from many years of wanderings, escapes, and kisses. Her metallic gaze drifted from the skies to shimmering, tin foil river, where Rudy, her husband of four and a half hours, stood, one quarter submerged in pearly white reflected clouds, throwing stones into the silver oblivion like the overgrown child he was.

The hem of his suit trousers were rolled up to his shins, his bare feet hidden by layers of still water. His jacket and tie were discarded somewhere up the bank, leaving him in his white shirt. Liesel watched him affectionately, was even tempted to join him, but chances of Ilsa Hermann hacking her fingers off with a bread knife if she got the dress wet were fairly high, so she refrained.

The silence that filled the air was sweet, wonderfully content. It stirred the water, it drew the long calm exhales from her sleepy lungs. It lit up his lemon hair in the half light. Liesel loved the silence, just as much as she loved the words. It wrapped them up and kept them. Such a beautiful evening it was.

It had been a day of promises and apologies and hands. As the quiet, grey stone of the small church at the end of the road enclosed her, she was passed from hand to hand: from Ilsa's gentle but stern administrations to her hair that morning (a stunning concoction of curls and twists that were currently rapidly unravelling by the minute), to Max's steady grip on her trembling fingers as he walked her down the narrow aisle, and finally, Rudy's tender touch as he slid the ring on her finger, a look of such concentration on his face that she was tempted to laugh. Rust met ice as the grey man droned on monotonously and Liesel and Rudy found themselves suppressing giggles, the sense that they were playing house rather than actually getting married overwhelmingly present.

They had escaped their own reception a while ago. The Bürgermeister had invited a small collection of people to their home for alcohol and food, and half of this small collection of people Liesel did not know, and were, quite frankly, painfully dull. Most of them were definitely old ex-Nazi officers, lumbering around with healthy doses of whiskey, and Liesel found herself wondering idly if her reception had coincided with an official reunion or the Mayor simply enjoyed spending time with his old Fürher friends that much.

Herr Steiner was there, smiling courteously at the guests, though she could tell he wanted to go home to bed - he was getting on a little in years. Max was also present, standing awkwardly in the corner, a tall sack of jutting bones that no one quite knew what to do with.

'You can go if you really want,' Liesel murmured to him as another uniformed gentleman threw him an odd look.

'And miss out on all this blatant discrimination of my religion? Hell no,' Max replied brightly.

'Very funny. Now go home,' she ordered sternly.

Max smiled affectionately down at her. 'You always were rather terrifying.'

'And you know well that I can be more terrifying,' she said levelly. 'Now go home.'

'Won't you miss me?' he asked.

'Don't worry about me. I'm taking my husband and getting out of here as soon as I can.'

They both looked across the room at Rudy, who was trapped in a conversation with an elderly man. He seemed to be determined to recount the entire history of Algerian fauna to Rudy, who looked like he would have happily dived out of the window at that very moment.

'I should probably get him out of here before he shoots himself,' Liesel said thoughtfully.

'Good plan,' he conceded. 'Take good care of that boy. He adores you.'

'I know,' she smiled.

'Well, it's getting late, and I suddenly feel rather ill,' Max said in mock concern. 'How terrible. I suppose I'll just _have_ to go home.'

'Yes Herr Vanderburg, I think it is essential that you go home and rest,' she said authoritatively.

'Well, if you insist,' he shrugged. He gave her a swift kiss to her forehead and murmured, 'Congratulations sister.' Then he stepped back from the room and quickly exited.

Her eyes drifted back over to where Rudy stood and watched him as he painstakingly extracted himself from the man, excuses spilling hurriedly from his mouth, and she stifled a laugh.

He came rushing over to her, his arm gripping her elbow. 'Get me out of here?' he pleaded.

'With pleasure,' she replied, pulling him out the room. In the hallway, she turned to him. 'Go wait outside, I'm going to talk to Frau Hermann.'

He nodded and walked out the front door just a little too quickly to be polite. She rolled her eyes and headed across the hall to the library. The door slid open at a push and she could taste the delicate slice of dust and paper that greeted her. She entered the room, suddenly swallowed by wonderful, soft silence.

Ilsa looked up from her book and smiled. 'You're leaving.'

No matter how long she spent with Ilsa Hermann, the woman always seemed to find a way to steal the words from Liesel's mouth. Just like now.

'I- uh-' she spluttered, completely at a loss.

The silver haired woman let out a laugh. 'It's okay, Liesel. I know that this hasn't exactly been _your_ party. My husband does like his meetings.'

'Oh,' she said, shifting awkwardly. 'Now that you mention it-'

'Go on, off you go. Have some fun,' Ilsa smiled complacently at her. 'Enjoy married life.'

'Thank you,' Liesel said humbly. She opened the door, throwing a last grateful glance at Ilsa, then retreated from the house.

Rudy was waiting obediently by the spot where The Whistler had been laid. He grinned his smirking grin, the one that looked exactly the same at twenty that it did at ten, and took her hand. She pulled off her painful high heels so that she was barefoot. And then they were running.

Even after all these years, even after so many life shattering events, it always seemed to come back to them running. It always came back to the raw ache in their lungs, the pounding of their drumming feet, the thrumming of their heartbeat mixed with the wind. Always, always running, just like when they were children. Just like when they were eighteen and running from their grief - but again, that's a different story.

They reached the Amper River, clutching their throbbing ribs, laughter spilling from their breathless lips. She had fallen down into the earth, her chest heaving, as she tossed aside the shoes that resided in clenched fists. He had kicked his shoes off, tugging off his jacket and tie and bounding into the water. She wasn't quite clear why, but she didn't question it as she let her breathing slow down.

Now they were here, letting the minutes slip by in a soft cloud of bliss. Letting the sky bloom and unfurl, her bouquet of roses.

'What are you thinking about?' The words fell from her lips, slipping through the cool air to the leaf-strewn earth.

There was a contemplative pause. 'I'm thinking...that I'm cold.'

'Oh wow,' she said. 'Very insightful.'

Rudy grinned sheepishly in reply, stepping out of the water and shaking his feet off. He walked up the bank and sat down beside her on the ground.

'What else are you thinking, Jesse Owens?' she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.

'Why so philosophical all of a sudden?' he smiled down at her, wrapping an arm round her shoulder.

'Why don't you just answer the question saukerl?' she replied. 'What are you thinking?'

She wasn't quite sure what she was expecting. Maybe a sexual joke or something. There were entire worlds in her mind constructed from Rudy's words, mostly built from swearing and insulting terms of endearment. But she did not foresee the words that grappled the air, released from the edge of his tongue.

'I'm thinking that it was different than the last time.'

Oh.

***September 14th, 1943***

**Twenty three days before Himmel died.**

**The first wedding of Jesse Owens and his Book Thief.**

The wailing sirens sang through the evening, ripping the darkening sky in two. The world was filled with sound, a harsh, terrifying sound that could make the strongest of souls shiver in remembrance. The sky was shattered, the peace impertinently interrupted like a screaming child. The air raid was earlier than expected, dragging the agitated, buzzing insects from their homes as they swarmed into a neighbour's hive. The basements were filling.

Two out of three of 33 Himmel Street - the third seemingly missing - came hurrying out of the house. A man with molten silver eyes and a woman made of cardboard. They stepped out into the dusk and heading towards the end of the street, where the the neighbours were clumped like cement. They looked around agitatedly for the third, the daughter, out a little bit later than she had promised. The man knew the third was out with her best friend, and hoped to God that they would return soon.

The square woman, like a wardrobe on legs, with a pile of elastic on her head was complaining loudly at the lack of her daughter's presence. Though she buried it beneath several threats to knock the girl into next week, there was fear weaving through her ribs, impaling her heart._ Where was that saumensch?_

_'_Where is she?' the woman demanded of her husband.

'I don't know, dear,' he replied simply, 'But she's a smart girl. She'll know to get under cover.'

'I bet she's with that Steiner boy!' she yelled. 'If I get my hands on that dummkopf, I'll-'

But her sentence was drowned in a sea of keening cries from the siren's angry metal teeth. They shuffled down into the neighbour's basement, throwing a last anxious glance around the grey, sleepy houses. Then the doors shut.

And somewhere near the outskirts of Molching, two fourteen year olds ran for their life down the road, swearing loudly as they sprinted for home.

'Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.' Rudy's curses barely marked the surface of the siren's screams.

It always comes back to running. Burning lungs and pounding feet and the tuneless whispers of the wind.

Liesel's breath scraped through her lungs like barbed wire, tearing up her chest. She could hear the high pitched winces issuing from her throat as she tried to keep her head from exploding, her heart from bleeding. They tore up the streets towards Himmel, hearing the sounds of frantic chattering depleting slowly in the night air. They were going to be left outside.

'We can still make it!' Rudy yelled, his voice engulfed by the wailing, and she hoped against hope that he was right. She heard a thump behind her, a loud, angry string of swear words, and she turned to see Rudy sprawled across the ground, struggling to get up.

'Goddamn it, Rudy!' she yelled.

She ran to his side to help him up. She dragged his arm over her shoulder and they stumbled onwards as quickly as they could on three and a half feet.

They staggered onto Himmel, Rudy moving at half his regular speed due to the icy sharp pain slicing through his ankle like glass. Then Liesel halted at the centre of the street, Rudy nearly falling over at the sudden stop. They're eyes darted round in panic: the entire street was clear. Everyone was down in the Fiedler's basement.

'Fuck,' she murmured as the siren stopped crying. There was a resounding silence, eerily creeping through their bones and gripping their thumping hearts.

'Fuck,' Rudy agreed.

'What do we do?' Liesel whispered, as if the bombs would somehow hear her voice and come for them.

'Maybe my house is unlocked. We could go into my basement,' he replied, his voice trembling a little.

The muffled, far sound of a plane's heartbeat meeting the earth rumbled through the ground, making the two freeze up where they were. They turned in dread to the source of the sound, but saw nothing in the darkness.

'Come on,' he murmured, limping across to his house. She followed behind, gazing at the sky in fear. There was a smattering of stars looking thoughtfully down at her. 'Liesel!' she snapped to attention, finding Rudy sliding the window open.

_Just another theft. Just another theft._

Her thoughts bit at the corners of her mind as Rudy gave her a leg up through the front window. Moments later, Rudy dragged himself up and into the kitchen, where they crouched in complete darkness. Another heartbeat echoed through the skies, sending a tremor through the house, and her hand found his in the black oblivion.

'We need to get down to the basement,' he whispered, and she nodded, though she knew he couldn't see her.

And suddenly, he was tugging her through the blindness, towards an unknown destination. Darkness painted her eyes. Nothing existed except her breathing, and Rudy's warm, shaking grip on her. Several times, she felt him stumble in front of her, his winces cutting through the black, and she would stumble with him, sometimes catching a leg or an arm or a rib in her flailing hand.

Her feet met nothing, as suddenly she was maneuvered through a door and down a set of stairs. Fat raindrop bombs were hitting the ground somewhere nearby: she could feel the vibrations brushing down her spinal chord like ice.

Then his hand left hers, and she was swallowed by the nothing, the darkness capturing her and holding her in its vice like grip.

'Rudy?' she whispered desperately, turning her head wildly to find some kind of sight of him: there was none. 'Rudy, come back.'

Suddenly, her eyes blazed with light and she found herself face to face with Rudy, holding a rusty old lantern. He grinned.

'Hey.'

Liesel gave him a swift slap round the head. 'Idiot.'

Another raindrop hit the ground, like a far off footsteps. Their breathing slowed right down as they eyes drifted fearfully to the ceiling. She backed slowly into the corner, sinking down on some dusty sheets that spread across the cement floor. Her knees came up to her chest as she huddled against the frost biting at her skin. Rudy painstakingly lowered himself down onto a paint tin across from her. A shudder sliced through her system as another bomb met its mark and she curled up tighter, her breath twisting and curling in the air before her.

'You're cold?' he asked.

'A little,' she said, a touch defensively.

There was a split second of thought, then Rudy pushed himself off the paint tin and crawled across to her, his bad ankle dragging like a chain behind him, joining her where she sat. His arms wove around her, pulling her head into his shoulder. They stayed, two scared children, unbearably small in a cruel world, entwined with each other.

'Rudy?' her voice cracking through the thick, cold silence like stone.

'Yeah?'

'Are you afraid of dying?'

***One Small Fact***

**I have heard that question asked so many times.**

**And no matter how many times I hear it,**

**I am always drawn to the answer.**

Liesel wondered if Rudy realised that his grip on her had seemingly tightened momentarily round her. She decided not to mention it.

She honestly didn't know why she asked. Maybe the fact that she knew Death stood so close, so close to where they stood, that another heartbeat from a plane's ribcage could be her last. Maybe she had always wanted to know, always harboured a hidden curiosity about something that she had been acquaintances with for a long time, but did not know quite well enough. Whatever the reason, it seemed Rudy had no answer prepared.

'What do you mean?' he said slowly.

'I mean just that.' She looked up at him, at the light from the lantern flickering in his deep blue eyes. 'Are you afraid of dying?'

There was a long, drawn out pause, stretching across the seconds like spider webs. Then Rudy looked down at her, his eyes crusted over with sobriety.

'If I was, would you say I was a coward?'

Liesel tilted her head upward and laid a small kiss at his throat, feeling the oxygen brush through his veins, feeling the life burning under his skin. 'No.'

'Then I'm terrified,' he said simply.

'So am I,' she said.

Liar.

Another pause bit down on their lips, halting sound and engulfing them. It was cold and she found herself burying deeper into the knot of limbs she had tied herself in, for some kind of warmth.

'Why do you think that is?' Rudy piped up thoughtfully.

'Why do I think what is?' she said in confusion.

'Death. Why are we afraid of death?' His voice was solemn, but she could hear the curiosity dripping to the cement floor like honey.

'I don't know,' she said, 'Maybe because we don't know what comes next.'

'Himmel and Hölle?' he suggested weakly.

'If you believe that,' she shrugged. 'But death is death. It's the end. That moment where all thoughts, all memories and all emotions just...stop.' Her eyes fell to her numb fingers and she studied them, the creases and contours and scabs from where she had picked at the loose skin. 'People are afraid of death because living is the only reality they know.'

'And the pain. That sounds fun,' Rudy smiled brightly.

Liesel laughed a little. 'Yeah, the pain is best bit.'

Another heartbeat blossoming in the distance, the sound of destruction, made them flinch a little as they huddled closer together. The warmth between them was sparse and barely distinguishable from the bitter cold of the basement, but it was just enough to prevent pneumonia or something similar.

'So do you think we're going to die?' she asked. Her face was impassive, as she had trained it to be, but the words were soaked in fear, the hope that he would reassure her. She didn't want to die here, in a coffin made of cement and dust. And she wouldn't die here. But then, humans have a remarkable capacity to develop perfectly feasible phobias and build them to ridiculous heights. Everyone is afraid of me in some form or other. Everyone.

'I don't know,' he said, uncertainty grappling his teeth. 'If we die, we die. Just like you said.'

'Goddamn it,' she murmured.

He grinned at her through the half-light. 'Was that not the right answer?'

'No,' she said sulkily. 'Wrong answer.'

'Sorry,' he said sheepishly.

They collapsed back into a considerably warmer silence, one that wrapped them up like butter. The raindrop bombs were growing more distant, but Liesel honestly didn't have much experience in trying to discern the distance of a bomb, so tried not to feel relieved.

'Liesel?'

'Yes?'

'Let's get married.'

Silence. Silence and the smoky flowers blooming from Liesel's lips.

'Rudy, was that a _proposal?_'

'Maybe.'

'Jesus, Rudy. There's a time and place,' she said.

'I know. That's my point,' he said, as if it were obvious.

'What, you think _now_ is the time and place?' she asked incredulously.

'Well why not?'

'Oh,' she said, in mock thought, 'Well maybe the fact that we're fourteen years old. We don't have a ring. There doesn't _seem_ to be a priest anywhere nearby. And oh yes, _it's raining bombs right now._'

There was a long pause in which Rudy seemed to absorb this. Then he said slowly, 'I see your point.'

'Good. I'm glad,' she replied, satisfied.

'But that's why we should get married,' Rudy continued thoughtfully, as if there hadn't been an interruption. 'It's raining bombs. We could be dead in minutes. Why the hell not?'

A sigh of mingled exasperation and affection was cast from her throat. 'Rudy, I- I don't even know what to say to that.'

'Admit it,' he smirked. 'You'd just _love_ me to be your husband.'

Liesel disregarded this with an irritated flick of the head. 'We're _fourteen_, Rudy.'

'Yes, and we may well be dead at fourteen. Just give me this, please?' His tone had grown endearingly pleading, and she gazed up at his face, childish and sweet, and tried not to smile. Unhelpfully, another bomb chose to send a shiver through the house, sounding dangerously close, and she unconsciously crept closer to him.

'Okay,' she murmured, gloriously defeated.

A grin spread like wings on his face, and the smile burst from her lips, unrestrained and golden.

Liesel was struck with a sudden thought. 'How exactly do you get married?'

Rudy looked down at her in surprise. 'You don't know?'

'I've never been to a wedding,' she shrugged.

'It's easy. You just stay quiet, then say 'I do' when you need to.'

'That's it?' she said in disbelief. 'Then what's all the fuss about?'

'I don't know. I'm not a grown up, am I? Anyway-' he cleared his throat loudly, and then drawled in low, grey voice, 'We are gathered here today to-'

'What are you doing?' she laughed.

'The sermon,' he said, 'Now shut up. You're ruining my speech.'

'Sorry.'

'We are gathered here today to celebrate the...uh- _joining - _yeah, that sounds right - the joining of Liesel and Rudy. Does anyone have any reason why they should not be wed?'

He looked around the empty basement, to a resounding silence. 'I damn well thought so,' he said decidedly.

'Anyway,' he continued authoritatively, 'we begin the marriage vows.' He turned to Liesel and took her hand. 'Do you, saumensch, take-'

'Rudy,' she said, 'If you're going to do this, do it properly.'

'Okay, fine. Do you, _Miss _Saumensch, take Mr. Saukerl to be your husband guy?' He leaned towards her and said in a stage whisper, 'This is where you say I do.'

'Uh, I do?' she said weakly.

'Christ, you sound so happy,' he said, and she cuffed him round the back of the head.

'I do,' she repeated firmly, her voice echoing against the walls. 'I do.'

Rudy smiled. 'I do too,' he murmured softly. 'And with the power invested in me, I now pronounce us husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.'

And then he was kissing her. And she was kissing him, her lips caught between his own, her smile mingling with his. He kissed the smoky flowers from her mouth, the shards of fear and dust, each one devoured by her wonderful best friend. He tasted of frost and cement and a day spent in the grass by the Amper River, an odd and sweet mixture. And it was so soft, a ghost of a kiss that she felt the frustration build up in her chest.

His cold hands held her face, tangling in the wisps of loose hair and pulling her closer. Her numb, trembling fingers found their way into his lemon hair as she moved onto his lap and straddled him, winding her arms around his neck and kissing the corners of his mouth. His lips parted and a sound trapped halfway between a surprised gasp and a lustful moan escaped against her own lips as his arms wrapped round her waist, pulling her into his chest.

Another broken heartbeat dragged through the sky, and they broke apart, breathing heavily and looking to the ceiling in fear. There was nothing but silence, suffocating, cement silence. And then another pulsing heartbeat in the distance.

Liesel slid off Rudy's lap slowly, lucidity blooming in her rusty brown eyes, and she curled up beside him, trying to keep herself from trembling with longing. His arm wrapped around her once again, hugging her close. They sat in a dazed, distorted silence, not quite knowing what to say, trying to forget the warm, fuzzy sensation gripping at their insides.

'Do you think we're going to die?' she whispered into his shoulder.

'I don't know,' he said. His eyes drifted over to meet hers. 'But at least I can die happy now.'

There were no words buried in her vast, forever evolving index of vocabulary that she absorbed from her books that she could think to respond with. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, so very much, but somehow, she knew it would sound quite as genuine as she would want it to. So instead, other words came.

'Rudy, if you die on me, I will personally castrate you.'

'Fair enough.'

They laughed, a cold, sweet sound bounding off the walls and scattering across the floor. She settled into his chest, her eyelids growing heavy as the light of the lantern growing fainter, the darkness creeping in. She felt herself being laid down on the ground, the dusty sheet beneath her being dragged over her like a blanket. Then she felt Rudy lay alongside her, holding her close so that his chin rested upon her shoulder.

Sleep drifted in like a flurry of snow, burying her in makeshift oblivion, and she fell into troubled dreams, rocked to sleep by his slow breathing on her neck and the raindrop bombs.

***The Story Of Liesel And ****Rudy Steiner***

**Two weddings.**

**One in a stone church under a sky of roses.**

**One in a coffin of cement while it rained bombs.**

**Which one was the real one?**

'Do you think we did it in the wrong order?' Rudy said thoughtfully.

The roses were scattering to a blue tinged dusk. Her eyes were painted with the petals. 'What do you mean?'

'We got married at fourteen. Consummated it at eighteen. Got engaged a few months ago. And now we're married again,' he said. 'Wrong order.'

'Our lives have never been in the right order,' Liesel pointed out. 'Who loses their entire family by the time their fifteen? Besides, it wasn't like the one in the basement was real.'

He smiled at her, his wonderful best friend a bride for the second time. 'It was real enough, Mrs. Saumensch.'

She grinned. 'Yes. I guess it was, Mr. Saukerl.'

He leaned over and kissed her forehead. 'Can we go home now?'

'You're tired?' she asked incredulously.

There was a grin stuck to the corners of his mouth. 'Nope.'

Understanding unfurled in her eyes like a storm. She rolled her eyes and sighed in defeat - glorious, glorious defeat. 'If you insist.'

Rudy pushed himself to his feet, retrieving his discarded clothes from the muddy ground. Liesel gathered her skirts about her and got up slowly, shaking off the needle sharp disuse in her bare feet.

The sky was a bouquet of white, billowing roses, a wedding gift, an apology, as Mr. Saukerl and Mrs. Saumensch departed from the pearl river, fingers entwined.

***April 8th, 1949***

**The day Meminger officially became Steiner.**

**But it wasn't necessarily the first time.**

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Again, thank you FandomThief for the chapter inspiration (I know it's sort of late, sorry). I love hearing from you wonderful people and feedback is always appreciated. So if you have any requests or ideas, let me know.**

**Sorry for the long wait. School is being school and that never really helps matters at all. I know it's not my best work, but yeah. Hope you liked the chapter and please leave a review. **


	9. Forget

**A/N: So here you go. Your M rated chapter. It's my first attempt at an M rated piece so I'm pretty damn nervous. But I think we all need a little bit of LieselxRudy smut in our lives, don't you?**

**It's not going to be very graphic, but I guess I'll see how it goes.**

* * *

><p>It was a day that wore a silky, grey gown of morning, clothed in harsh, disinfectant sunlight beaming down on the shimmering, silver concrete laid out below it. Large, curling wisps of cloud bloomed and billowed, reaching towards the sky like the remnants of a smoker's cement lungs.<p>

The constant murmur of far off gossip returned like the rustling of leaf carcasses on the Autumn ground, as it normally did on the start of each day; the small world that was Molching was awake, and crawling with life.

It was one of those mornings that resemble a twisted and - quite frankly - painfully boring limbo, each second identical to the one prior. Another moment of paper white sky; another moment of mindless marching to a grey, crumbling brick oblivion. One hour was much the same as the others, bleeding into each other at a leisurely pace like the dull raindrop veins on the smoky glass.

***October 8th, 1947**

**Four years and a day.**

The pale curtains glowed like sun-struck eyes, glaring sleepily through cheap, industrial cotton eyelids. The room was warm and illuminated in the soft, milky half-light, giving the walls the odd and slightly ironic appearance of a blush.

It was to this symphony of indistinguishable, buzzing voices and the spluttering, throaty cough of motor engines that the Book Thief awoke.

Liesel's eyes slid open a little, peering wearily at the stream of daylight that seeped through the dragging strokes of her eyelashes. A long, impatient sigh was drawn from behind her teeth as she burrowed further under the duvet, burying herself in Germany's finest, institutional sheets. Thin, makeshift sleep crumpled over in layers, like a slab of fabric, enfolding her in a stuffy, uncomfortable embrace of sorts.

Liesel Meminger had never necessarily been a morning person.

You would have thought that she would have noticed something wasn't quite how it was supposed to be. She was an intelligent woman, perceptive, with the eyes of a thief. But it was either the unwillingness to wake up or the remains of the whiskey consumed the night before that fogged up her head like the concrete clouds outside.

There were many hints available to select from. Far too many. It was like a trail of breadcrumbs, fragments of the events beforehand. They would peek up from the corners of her peripheral vision (if she could be bothered to open her damn eyes), dancing at the edge of her unsteady mind like the folds at the edge of a page. If counted on fingers, the telltale signs would add up to a grand total of seven.

Some of them were hidden; some were glaringly obvious, laid languidly out among the scraped teeth of the dark floorboards and chipped skirting board.

There were seven standout hints to choose from.

And yet, oddly enough, Liesel discovered the insignificant, all-but-invisible eighth hint. The one she wasn't supposed to think about at the dawn of a surprising revelation. The one that anyone else wouldn't have noticed.

Then again, Liesel Meminger had never necessarily been a morning person.

As she shifted a little in her slumber, she felt an uncomfortable jab in her side through the thin quilt of the mattress. It was an impertinent prod from non other than a thick, iron spring, poking up like a bird through the branches of a tree.

That was the first alarm bell, sounding in her head.

One eye cracked opened in confusion. Never, ever in her many years sleeping at 18 Grande Strasse had mattress springs ever interrupted her sleep. Her bed was created from high-quality, goose-feather, no-springs-guaranteed goodness and this was not it.

This is the first thing she noticed. Well done, Liesel. Well done.

The seven signs followed somewhat in order after that.

Liesel pushed herself up on her elbows, rubbing her eyes with her palm. The duvet slipped from her head, revealing the room she resided in. The features of the room began to emerge in more clarity. Her eyes stung a little at corridor of light reaching through the slice in the curtains.

The first sign struck home when she noticed a corner of wooden floorboards. In her room, her floor was composed from a rich, finely embroidered rug that was a little too large for the room, and acted simply as a surrogate carpet, which - she noted - was currently absent from her view.

Two: there was a significant lack of a bookshelf, much less any actual books. That was the second warning sign that this was not her room (if that wasn't a warning sign, then I don't know what is).

Three: the air didn't taste of regality and passed-from-generation-to-generation dust, like she was now accustomed to. It tasted of cheap, newly plastered paint and the familiarly unfamiliar homely scent of dried sweat. Whose sweat, she did not quite know, so she naturally assumed it belonged to her.

Four: an empty whiskey bottle lay despondently on its side, mournfully dripping a small stream of gold like droplets of blood. Alcohol of any kind was strictly prohibited from the top floor of the Bürgermeister's home. This rule had been solidly set in place after a certain incident - a year since the bombing, at the age of fifteen, Liesel had gradually and systematically drank an entire bottle of champagne that she had stolen from the mayor's kitchen, in remembrance of her Papa. They had found her passed out on the floor of her bedroom, clutching shards of the shattered empty bottle in her bleeding, tearstained hands.

Five and six came along in such a jumble of confusion and fear, they were almost indistinguishable, hitting like a punch to the gut. Her clothes were spread across the floor like marionettes with their strings cut, seemingly tossed there in a hurry. They lay there incriminatingly, glaring resentfully up at her like murder victims. The remains, the carcasses of last night.

It was then that with a jolt, she became aware that she was wearing nothing. She was completely naked beneath the duvet. Suddenly, the sheets she had tangled herself in seemed impossibly thin, impossibly, unacceptably uncovering. Panic ate away at her bare skin like the heat that had suddenly gripped her body as she scrambled to cover herself.

Those were the first six signs. The seventh came next. The one that could have cancelled out all else, if she had bothered to pay any sort of attention.

Liesel glanced over beside her and was both astonished and awed to find Rudy Steiner fast asleep. Also completely naked.

It was that moment when her heartbeat just stopped for a second or two. She honestly hadn't been expecting this. Why she hadn't noticed his presence to begin with is completely beyond me, because it's the type of thing someone would realise first off.

Then it hit her. Everything that had happened the night before came rushing back like a hurricane, making the light, little butterflies in her belly awaken. They seemed to be eating her insides up.

She remembered why she was here.

What she had done.

Oh.

_Oh._

Shit.

***October 7th, 1947***

**Four years.**

**The night before.**

Four years.

This week of the year had always been the most difficult. Of all weeks during the year, this one broke through their carefully crafted walls. It was one of those walls, built up from the rubble of their former lives, the remnants of their homes, the corpses of their childhood. It protected them from the worst of the storm.

It was a shelter of sorts, thrown together beneath their ribcages, enclosing their torn and battered hearts. It smothered every artery, every vein, like cement, corrupting her yet numbing her to the extremities of her grief. She didn't want it to be like that. But in the end, blunting her emotions was a small price to pay for it not hurting. It didn't hurt as much any more. It only hurts a little now.

After that incident with the Whistler so many years ago, Liesel had made a resolution not lose control of her emotions again. It was too much for her, too high a cost. And she didn't want to put that kind of strain on Rudy, if she could help it.

Rudy had seemingly went along with this resolution, taking it in his stride and moulding it to himself. Truthfully, he needed just as much help as she did. The image of his mother's body being carried away was the stuff of nightmares, biting at the corners of his mind ever since. It couldn't be dulled by time. But it could be oppressed.

Four years.

They survived the next four years in a somewhat peaceful oblivion, dutifully shoving away any thoughts that could potentially break them down. But it was always the same when that day came around, an anniversary of sorts, a birthday for destruction. Another year since the heartbeats of a plane's ribcage rained down upon them like snow.

It was this date that the walls would be picked apart, their shelters slowly and lagouriously destroyed, until they were bare and wildly vulnerable, open to be damaged. It was always the same. Always the damn same.

This year had found Liesel curled up by Rudy's front door, having staggered over to Herr Steiner's shop from the Bürgermeister's house. Herr Steiner, rather predictably, was out of town - he always was at this time of year - yet Rudy had stayed home. A 'closed' sign that hung neatly in the door stared down at the shaking woman that desecrated its territory.

It was relatively early evening when Rudy finally came home, finding her trembling on his doorstep.

'Hey, saumensch,' he said simply. He wasn't surprised as such. After all, it was always the same.

Liesel looked up at him through wide eyes. 'Hey, saukerl,' she murmured.

He had sat down on the doorstep beside her, apparently not caring about the passing glances of his neighbours. His arm automatically wove round her shoulders, pulling her into his neck. This always seemed to calm her down a little. That boy's neck works wonders for her. It's really quite fascinating.

He didn't need to ask what was wrong. Instead, he went directly for the next, most important question. 'How are you doing?'

'Oh I'm having a smashing time,' she spat out bitterly.

'Really? I thought it was just me.' A small laugh fell from her lips, as easily as rain, and she burrowed further into his neck.

'Aren't these things supposed to get easier with time?' she mumbled.

'Supposedly,' Rudy sighed. 'But I'd just _love_ to punch the bastard that said that.'

'Agreed.'

They lapsed into a soft, comfortable silence that wrapped her up like a blanket. It was those silences that she longed for. Not the cold, empty ones that she faced alone; the ones she shared with her best friend, ones of peace and mingled breath and that content feeling she got when nothing needed to be said.

'Let's go somewhere,' Rudy piped up suddenly. The proposition hung in the air like a bird in flight, then flit away, the words scattering against the pavement.

'Sure,' she said. 'Where?'

'The river,' he replied. She had looked up at him then, and had seen in his childish blue eyes that the river was the only place he wanted to go, and that was fine.

She had leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, said something vaguely along the lines of 'okay', and they stood up decidedly.

'Hang on,' Rudy said, as inspiration struck his features, and he disappeared into the two-bedroomed flat above the shop. She had glanced around absentmindedly and for some reason, wondered if the plump grey clouds that filled the sky like an ocean were as soft as they looked. It's these kind of side-notes that Liesel has an impressive talent for remembering.

***October 7th, 1947***

**Four years.**

Rudy reappeared, a mischievous glint blossoming in his eyes like a drop of ink in water, and Liesel was reminded with a jolt of the child he once was. The child she fell in love with.

He held up a small bottle of whiskey. 'All I could find.'

'No champagne?'

'Yeah right, saumensch. You're not going near champagne ever again,' he smirked, earning him a cuff around the head.

'Oh shut up. That was three years ago.'

'I heard you tried to pick a fight with your bookcase-'

'That's not true!' she gasped scandalised, cuffing him a second time.

'Come on, you old drunk, we're wasting precious alcohol time,' he dangled the bottle in her face, the gold liquid swirling around like a pretty tornado, and she slapped it away, but the corners of her mouth were curving into a heavily suppressed grin.

He leaned forward to capture it with his own, but she pulled away. 'Only if you win me in a race.'

'So I can't kiss you unless I win you in a race?' he asked incredulously.

'For the next five years,' she said solemnly.

Rudy looked at her, then looked down the road, then back to her. 'That kiss is mine, Meminger.'

'You wish, Steiner.'

They knelt down in the dusty road, shoulder to shoulder and swallowed by a sudden serious silence, buried deep under their fingernails as they dug into the gravel. There was no attempt to shatter through it. This was business. Serious business.

Or it would have been if she hadn't cheated.

Liesel had thrown several metres between her and Rudy before he had even realised what had happened. There were several more metres between them by the time he had stumbled to his feet. And then they were running.

It always comes down to running. Always.

She could remember the way the wind brushed past her face, as if it had somewhere it had to be. She could remember pushing her way through a heaving crowd of gales, murmuring tunelessly through tree branches. She could remember the pounding of her feet as they beat the ground like bullets; the euphoric sounding of alarms in her ears as her heartbeat scraped to a higher speed.

A laugh bubbled up in her throat, tearing through the thick, suffocating grief, and was released from her lips. It had mingled beautifully with the wind in her hair and the thrumming of her wild breathing. Somewhere behind her, there had been Rudy's breathless laugh sounding out against the wind.

She wanted to scream as elation - the exhilaration of experiencing life's small joys - and anguish - the despair of loss - battled out savagely in her belly, eating at her exhausted lungs and tugging at her veins. So she had laughed. And he had laughed. Because everything was fine.

They had both laughed. And she hoped to God that they would never stop.

***October 7th, 1947***

**Four years.**

**They could never forget.**

They had reached the river in a tumbled mess of hearts and bones and laughing, always, always laughing. Rudy, being highly superior at races, had caught up to her. They were neck a neck, struggling with each other like children in a brawl. As they reached the grassy banks, Liesel stumbled, dragging Rudy down with her.

The next thing Liesel knew, once she had opened her clenched shut eyes, was that Rudy was above her trying to steady his breathing and obviously suppress the laugh that was swelling up behind his teeth.

They caught each others eye, and his laughter spilled out over her, now unrestrained, and she relished it; it tasted so sweet in her lungs.

'I win,' he murmured, a confident smirk plastered to his face.

'As I recall, no one won,' she contradicted.

Regardless, he had already leaned in, had already pressed his mouth against hers. It could have been the remains of her earlier excitement, or longing to avoid any negativity. Or it could have been the odd, swelling heat building up in her belly. Whatever it was, she had found herself pushing herself up against him, kissing him back with enthusiasm.

But he had pulled away, pushed himself off her. Trying to shove away the disappointment that clouded her, she sat up, brushing the grass from her tangled, almost German hair.

'I still think I won,' she muttered.

'Believe it all you want, saumensch, it won't make it true.' He took a swig of the honey gold liquid. Liesel laughed as he pulled a contorted face. 'Ugh, it tastes like shit.'

'And you would know how that tastes, because?'

'Hey, I've eaten my fair share of shit.'

'Franz Deutscher?'

'How did you know?'

'Rudy, I was there when you were covered in the stuff.'

'Oh yeah.'

She had pulled the cuboid bottle from his grasp, 'You must be drinking it wrong.'

Then she had taken a gulp of it herself. Her throat had stung with fiery bites as the whiskey ran down it, catching in her chest. The rest was sent flying into the earth with her saliva as she spat it back out.

'You know,' she said thoughtfully, smacking her lips, 'It _does_ taste like shit.'

'Let me try it again,' he said, reaching for the bottle.

The next hour passed as a stubborn competition between Liesel and Rudy, attempting to outdo each other's attempts at keeping the stuff down. As the dark seeped into the pale evening sky, the whiskey disappeared centimetre by centimetre, another inch of putrid gold gone. The bottle was passed between the two, and they gulped it down. It was a dare of sorts, an unspoken challenge to test the boundaries they couldn't possibly have crossed any other day.

***October 7th, 1947***

**Four years.**

**She would make herself forget.**

As the evening drifted lazily into another frosty Autumn night, the taste of the alcohol lost its sting, even started to taste almost pleasant, in that perverse, bitter way. Before they knew it, the bottle was empty.

They weren't drunk as such, as it wasn't a large bottle. But the spirit had woven its way into their bloodstream, making them jollier than usual, and a lot more giggly. They had even ended up singing - yelling - the German national anthem, very poorly out of tune, because Liesel and Rudy had never necessarily been able to sing that well.

In retrospect, it was probably a stupid idea to drink half a bottle of whiskey. Liesel had been hoping to blunt her grief, and it had worked. Mostly. Though it was good for a distraction, it all but shattered that wall she had built up over the years, as honestly, alcohol was great for scratching away the protective surface, leaving old wounds revealed and vulnerable. She was liable for attack. It would have been simply too easy to break her down then.

Around nine (not that they had any way of telling the time), a steady pulse of rain began to fall, dripping down their necks and arms. In a buzz of exhilaration and over-sentimentality, they had run, laughing, forever laughing, away from the river, Liesel dragging the singing empty bottle through the air behind her.

They reached Rudy's front door, giggling like children, as the rain began to thicken, dribbling down their faces. That was how they stood for the next five minutes, desperately trying to delay the inevitable: the moment when Liesel would force herself to walk away, go home, and fall into another nightmare that would be waiting just for her.

***October 7th, 1947***

**Four years.**

**It would always come back.**

It wasn't long before the giggling stopped, and they looked at each other. Rudy gazed sadly down at her, always seemingly on the verge of saying something, anything, to prevent what was to come.

'Do I have to go?' she pleaded, the words slipping from her mouth before she could stop them.

Rudy said nothing, but simply looked at her tenderly, rain running down his face.

'Please,' she whispered, 'Help me forget.'

He gulped, and nodded, still unable to say anything. Instead, he reached forward, cupping her damp face in both hands, and kissed her.

'Stay with me,' he murmured into her lips.

She nodded numbly, kissing him back in desperation, her thin arms wrapping round his neck. Precipitation painted their skin, yet there they had stayed, locked in an embrace.

There was a movement beside her, and somehow the door was open - Rudy must have unlocked it - and suddenly, she was being backed into a wall, a door, something.

He was so close, pressing her up against the cool, white wallpaper of the hallway. She could remember the taste of the liquor on his warm breath, the raindrops on his lips. It was oddly delicious. She kissed each shard of rain off his mouth, relishing the feel of it. His tongue slid between her teeth, and she welcomed it gladly. That golden swelling in her belly had returned, burning at the knot of her stomach like a fire. His fingers gently dragged her damp, dark yellow hair over her shoulder as he pressed his lips softly against the newly bare, tender skin of her neck.

His hands had crept down from her face to her hips, lifting her up so that she was level with his intense, blue gaze. Her fingers tangled in his lemon hair as she pulled him closer, her legs wrapping round his waist. His mouth was travelling across her face, her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, anywhere he could reach was attended to by his lips. It felt glorious.

She could remember that vague sensation of being carried, seemingly up a flight of stairs if she was not mistaken. Then another door had opened, and for some reason, she had realised that she had been clutching the bottle entire time. It fell from her grasp and hit his bedroom floor with a musical thud.

Then another surface had come up to greet her: Rudy's bed. She was laid carefully down, seconds later joined by Rudy settling above her. Again, her fingers wove into his hair, pulling his lips down to hers. He kissed her with a hunger, grazing his teeth against her bottom lip in an odd, burning frustration and making her breath catch in her throat.

Liesel hadn't been sure what exactly was going on. Normally, she would have pushed away this behaviour as stupid hormonal lust. Something she needn't worry about because it hardly concerned her. It was true that every so often, she would lose herself in Rudy's embrace, but she would always be clear-headed enough to stop it before it had gotten too far.

But fear of loneliness had made her reckless. It had made her long for his touch. Powered by the burning, golden fizz of the alcohol in her chest, she was drunk on his love; she drowned in his kisses and knew that she had never wanted anything else. Nothing else existed to her in that moment. Only Rudy's lips, his rough, tender lips brushing across her throat.

She remembered at that point that she was pulled into a kneeling position opposite Rudy as he carefully began to tug off layers of her clothing. She had obliged, gently pulling off his own clothes. Slowly, steadily, they had systematically undressed each other in a soft, thoughtful silence; removed all that separated them, piece by piece, reaching over to touch or kiss another patch of bare skin that had been revealed for the first time. It was almost like mapping uncharted lands; Rudy was already taking mental notes of each bump or line of her body as he kissed each in turn. His fingers played each protruding rib from under her skin like piano keys.

She had tried to avoid looking at him. She was afraid what she'd find if she did. Somehow, the image of Rudy would always remain to her that smug, grinning boy who ran races in the street, that's how it always should be. And she assumed it was the same for him, for no matter what he discovered or exposed, his eyes always seemed to flit back to her face, that one dearly familiar feature of hers that he knew well in the wake of this new territory.

And she was worried what he would find. Bones jutted out from under her skin in odd places, having never really been able to overcome the malnourishment of her childhood. Her flesh was uneven, marked with the Führer's signature stamped all over her body. The long, thin scar snaking across the back of her neck from the bite of the parade day whip. The numerous brushes of grey from the bruises that never quite went away. The harsh but loving kisses of goodbye from Himmel as the rubble embraced her like a child. Her body was an imperfection, a blot on a page of words.

As the last few scraps of modesty were unravelled from her, as she became bare, her arms moved to cover herself, cover the imperfections. It wasn't something she had generally thought about, let alone worried about, but she had never expected to be in this situation. But there she was, wrapped in her best friend's arms as he slowly and sweetly took her apart. She didn't want him to see what was underneath. It would hurt too much.

She felt her arms being gently pulled away from her body. 'Don't,' she whispered pleadingly, her eyes clenched shut.

There was a moment of deafening silence. Then she felt him pull her close, bury his face in her neck and murmur into her skin, '_Schön_.'

Then his lips devoured her, kissed every inch of her that he could find, as if she were as sweet as vanilla, as if she were as complete and whole and pure and utterly wonderful as he made her feel. Her eyes fluttered closed as his fingers caressed the imperfections, made them his, as carefully and lovingly as if she were made of glass, and she felt her lips part in a silent cry of fear and euphoria.

It was around that point that he had pulled her into his lap, so that she straddled him. It was also when Liesel felt a cold pang of fear brush down her spine. It was going too fast, speeding ahead to an unknown outcome. Yet she pushed forward, plunged deeper into the void.

Everything had frozen, just for a minute, as he rested his forehead against hers and tried to steady his breathing. His eyes met hers and held them, as he reached up and brushed the hair from her face, silently asking her the question she had no idea how to answer. This was the crossroad. This determined what came next.

And when she had looked into the deep, lustful blue of his eyes, she had seen fear. He was as afraid as she was, and for some reason, she found she loved him so much more for that. He was still that hopeful boy with the smug grin that ran races in the street. The boy next door. Her Rudy.

He didn't look to her for permission, he looked to her for reassurance.

***October 7th, 1947***

**Four years.**

**Only he could make her forget.**

She had held him close, kissed his forehead, and nodded, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough for Rudy.

Then there was pain. A powerful ache between her legs seemed to split her in half, rippling through her bones as he moved into her, and she winced, digging her nails into his shoulders. Rudy had groaned, gripping her waist. There was a pause, in which they had gathered themselves a little bit. Then it continued.

It was quite odd when she thought about it. The gripping soreness was a different kind of pain, nothing like she had ever known. It was bittersweet, and oddly gratifying, in a perverse, satisfactory way. It rolled through her system in waves, biting impertinently at her insides.

Beautiful, beautiful pain it was.

Rudy's name was forever printed on her lips as it was released in small gasps against his skin. He kept her close, one arm wrapped round her waist, his other hand stroking her hair as she buried her face in his shoulder, trying to stifle the yelps of pain. His lips stayed pressed tenderly to her neck as he rocked into her. He did not let a sound break from behind his teeth.

Liesel had not dared to look at what was going on below her. Truthfully, it had frightened her, more than any other experiences she had collected that night. It was a terrifying concept, how their bodies were seemingly joined. Of course, she knew the biological process; God knows, she had sat through enough damn health classes in her final year at school. But she kept her eyes clenched shut, bearing against the aching waves that seemed to be growing in size and frequency, hoping in equal measure that it would be over, yet not wanting it to end.

She could remember it suddenly picking up in speed. It hurt, growing steadily into a tsunami, a storm that she had to ride out. She could remember the tears stinging her eyes as the storm began to ravage her, sending her into stiff, savage spasms. Rudy seemed to be experiencing a similar afflictions as his movements picked up pace. Their panting mingled together in the hot, heavy air.

Her head tipped back as his lips ran across her collarbone. Her arms wrapped tightly around his neck and he laid small kisses across her shoulder. In a stab of sharp impatience and desire, she turned her head and caught his lips against her own, and she could taste a deep moan rising longingly from his throat.

There was an odd, swelling sensation in the tight knot of her stomach, rising up in her lungs like a volcano of delicious, burning glory until, finally, it was released from her lips in a hoarse cry of pain. Rudy's arms tightened around her, gripping her skin as he groaned again into her shoulder, a long, drawn out sound that burnt with desire, coupled with a gentle bite on her neck, then subsided.

Then there had been silence. Silence and the calming of breath. They had clung to each other, eyes closed, as they tried to settle their thudding heartbeats. Her fingers reached up to grasp his face in trembling hands and she leaned forward and kissed his lips, soft and true and exhausted, as his hands gently knotted in her tangled hair and held her there.

She rolled backward, pulling him with her, so that his head rested on her chest. She could feel his short exhales across her skin as she stroked his lemon hair.

'Hey saumensch,' he said.

Liesel smiled. 'Hey saukerl.'

She could remember being dragged down into the duvet with him as he pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her, and laid kisses across her lips. It was hard to tell what came next. Reality and fantasy began to distort in a spectrum of monochrome as she drifted into a troubled, dream-filled sleep, listening to the warm sound of Rudy's pulse and his slow breathing in her hair.

She dreamt of several things. A snowman in the basement; her Papa's gentle voice, squeezed out between two accordion lungs; and most prominently, the thought of Rudy Steiner naked, like she had at the confused and disturbed age of thirteen. He glowed in the dark, like he had so many years ago.

It was with these troublesome, yet oddly contented images, that the Book Thief fell into another morning.

Four years.

***October 8th, 1947***

**Four years and a day.**

**The morning after.**

Liesel clutched the duvet to her rapidly pounding heart as the memories flooded her mind, the images tumbling over each other in a wave of panic. Her thoughts were cracked and in a state of disorder at the hands of their golden, alcoholic creator, yet vividly clear, blazing under her eyelids.

'Shit...' she murmured. 'Shit.'

She looked down at Rudy, sleeping soundly, still buried in heavy layers of slumber. She was torn between the whorish longing to wake him so that he could wrap her up with some kind of reassurance - probably the more awkward decision - or the cowardly desire to retreat back to 18 Grande Strasse like the stupid slut she was.

The latter option seemed the better, slightly more honorable, choice, yet it didn't stop her proceeding with the first.

'Rudy?' she said pleadingly. 'Rudy, wake up.'

One perfect German eye cracked open in confusion as Rudy gazed around the room for the source of the familiar sound. His sleepy gaze fell on Liesel's curled up form beside him, and he frowned, as if trying to piece together a puzzle in his subconscious state - a fairly impossible feat.

'Rudy,' she said, a little louder.

Lucidity bloomed in his blue eyes as he looked at Liesel a second time, this time a look of recognition on his face. She waited patiently for it to dawn on him. His eyes widened and he sat up in shock.

'Oh shit.'

There you go.

'Rudy,' she said. He looked around at her with an expression of pleading denial, and she found she had literally nothing to say. They looked at each other in mutual speechlessness, the Book Thief and Jesse Owens undone.

'We-' he gulped, then began again. 'We did it, didn't we?'

Liesel let out a long puff of air. 'We did.'

'Oh.'

They fell into another silence, suffocated by the colossal event that over shadowed them. Humans, I suppose.

'Did it- did it hurt?' he asked across the silence, his voice enveloped by it.

'Yes,' she admitted. 'Quite a lot.'

'Oh God, Liesel, I'm sorry.' His arm reached across to hug her and then snatched back, a look of panic in his eyes, as if he would hurt her by his touch alone. There was a moment where she thought: where common sense and love were dragged battling into the spotlight as she weighed them up. Of course, the latter won.

Her fingers reached out and brushed the lemon hair from his forehead. When he didn't shrink from her, she slid across the mile wide stretch of mattress between them so that she was curled up beside him. The was a split second hesitation, then Rudy's tentative arms wrapped around her, pulling her into his body. It felt as if a barrier had broken, as if the restraint he had clearly tried to set in place had crumbled as she buried into his embrace.

'I'm sorry,' he mumbled again.

'Shut up, saukerl. It wasn't your fault,' she cuffed him lightly, smiling.

'What do you mean?'

'I was acting like an idiot,' she sighed, 'I should have gone home.'

He looked at her, his expression soft. 'I'm glad you didn't.'

'I know,' she smiled sadly. 'I'm glad I didn't.'

His hand reached across her face and pulled her lips to his, and she melted into his arms, rolling back with him so that he was on top of her. Instinct - stupid, stupid instinct - urged her to pull him back into the bed and let him take her again. But Liesel knew that her instincts had gone to shit as soon as she had asked to stay. It would be a long, long time before she would rely on them again.

'Besides, you did what I asked,' she shrugged, pulling away.

'Which was?' he prompted her.

She looked up, her rusty eyes painted with ice blue. 'You made me forget.'

He leaned forward again and caught her mouth in another kiss. 'You made me forget too,' he said softly against her lips. She smiled, and could taste his smile as well.

He broke off and grinned. 'So how much of that would you say was fuelled by the whiskey?'

'Ninety eight percent,' she said, 'Give or take.'

'And the other two percent?'

'Now there's a good question,' she said thoughtfully, 'Hormones? Over-sentimentality? Something along those lines.'

'Sounds about right.'

A laugh bubbled up in their throats, glorious and tired, and they settled back into the pillows. Liesel's head nestled into his throat, breathing in the homely scent of peace and dried sweat.

'Did you know what you were doing?' she asked in curiosity.

'Nope. You?'

'Why the hell would _I_ know anything about this?'

'Good point.'

There was a moment of contemplation, as Liesel thought about the events beforehand - the texture of his lips against her skin, the taste of the moan rising in his lungs - and tried not to let the passionate jumbled mess of panic and lust rise in her throat.

'Did you enjoy it?' he asked tentatively.

'I don't know,' she said. 'Sort of. It was strange but...nice. Do you know what I mean?

'Yeah,' he said. 'It was weird, but I liked it.'

'I guess it's the type of thing that you get better at with time,' she shrugged.

'So do you want to try it again?'

'Fuck no.'

He laughed. 'So can I go back to sleep?'

'Go ahead.'

He reached down and dragged the duvet over them, hugging her close to him. Warm, black oblivion began to settle over them once again like a layer of dust. They drifted off a second time, buried in that satisfactory sense of victory that came with getting through that day.

***October 8th, 1947***

**Four years and a day.**

**They had escaped.**

**They were victorious.**

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Holy crap, I hadn't expected it to be this long. This is the longest chapter I've ever written. Wow.**

**Anyway, like I said, this is my first smut piece, and I really hope it was okay, because I found it very difficult to write. I still feel like it isn't the best that it could be, but in the long run, I'm glad I wrote it. **

**I hope you enjoy it, and please leave a review.**

**(For future reference, I wrote a lot of this while listening to Salty Seas by Dévics. It's a beautiful song, just sayin')**


	10. Yellow

**A/N: Hey guys. So I have had this idea for a while now, and I really want to try it out. It is set before the events of Victory (whaaAAAAT?!) so they haven't kissed yet. It's basically the tension building up between the two of them - I know, they're like thirteen, but there's bound to be something there, right?**

**Anyway, enjoy.**

* * *

><p>'Rudy, where are we actually going?'<p>

'I told you. You'll see.'

'But I want to know!'

'I _told_ you. You'll see.'

'Rudy, that's not very encouraging.'

'Thanks. I'm flattered.'

On a grassy bank, cut in two by the rippling silver ribbon of the Amper River looping across the landscape, Liesel and Rudy wandered leisurely through what was probably once a forest, their footsteps weaving between the bones of trees. Drops of golden green sunlight dripped from the tips of leaves to their faces, running down their skin like warm, pretty rain. Her fingers brushed across the spines of trees like the books in the Bürgermeister's library.

It was an ridiculously warm Autumn day, one of the stray splashes of Summer that, on very rare occasions, leak into Winter. Never ones to miss an opportunity, Liesel and Rudy had plunged into it, thieving fingers bared eagerly. Or at least, Liesel had. Rudy apparently had other plans.

So now they were here, on a seemingly endless trek along the shimmering, tin foil river. Liesel had long since given up the pretence of indifference, and instead started repeatedly questioning Rudy on where they were actually headed. He, of course, remained aggravatingly unmovable.

She looked over at Rudy, shielding herself from the light that stained her eyes. 'Have we ever been there before?'

'Not that I know of,' he said slowly.

Liesel let out a sound of exasperation. 'What's that even supposed to mean? We've either been there or we haven't.'

Rudy swung round a tree to face her, smiling brightly. 'Don't you just _love_ the mystery of it all?'

'I'm not even going to dignify that with a response,' she said coldly to his smirk.

'Of course you're not,' he said with mock disdain, turning away and continuing to walk.

There was a short pause. 'You have no clue where we're going, do you?'

'Of course I know where we're going,' he answered, a touch defensively. 'What kind of dipshit do you think I am?'

'Do you really want me to answer that?'

'Not particularly.'

He caught her eye and grinned, and she looked away, her thoughts clouded with yellow. This seemed to be occurring more and more lately: yellow, yellow, yellow. The colour of her days with him. The taste of sun-tainted book thefts. The lemon shade of his hair. It was everywhere.

And for some reason, it was all she could think about.

Not that this was wholly surprising, to any onlookers. Adolescence had blown in with a gust of wind - dragging with it a wild variety of emotions and mood swings - and had began to envelope the two of them in a rather irritating manner. Liesel had become increasingly aware of the other girls at school suddenly gaining an interest in boys, and rouge, and breasts. At first, she couldn't possibly comprehend what was to be so fussed about. But she was still small, her chest still flat, and she had not bled. And she became horribly aware of that fact as the children around her began to eagerly and forcefully barge into some twisted form of adulthood.

It wasn't just her suddenly awkwardly aware of her own body and it's supposed deficiencies. Rudy was finding himself increasingly disturbed by the conversations he found himself roped into by his fellow football players. Mostly, it was females and their, shall we say, bodily functions. It was with an odd mix of confusion, adoration and something that cut a little deeper - very close to the knot of his stomach where the moths would begin to stir in Liesel's presence - that he began to think about his best friend in ways he barely thought possible, ways that would drag sleep from his eyes and leave him laid helplessly awake for the rest of the night.

And so it was that the next generation marched to the next stage of their lives, a jumbled, supposedly sophisticated mess of emotions, extroverts and general idiocy, dragging a bound and blindfolded Liesel and Rudy in its wake struggling for their freedom. Their lips were sewn together, their teeth snapped shut by this new awareness of their standing in life. Suddenly, their words gained new, terrifying meanings, and they had to watch what left their lips, how they would come out. Nevertheless, they continued, as far as they could, being children.

But it didn't quite stop the ache in his chest as he watched her trace the words on a page with her finger. Nor did it stop her eyes being stung with yellow as he smiled at some sarcastic remark she had made. Though they couldn't quite place why.

***One Small Fact***

**Despite all they said,**

**Jesse Owens and the Book Thief were becoming teenagers.**

**They were growing up.**

Understanderbly unsatisfied with the answers she had been fed, Liesel changed tack. 'Are we nearly there yet?'

'Uh...maybe?'

'Rudy, you said you knew where you were going.'

'I do!' he replied, affronted. Then after some thought, 'Just give me five minutes.'

A sharp sigh of annoyance ripped from her lungs. 'Come with me, he said. It'll be _fun_, he said...'

'And aren't you just having the time of your life?'

'Just give me five minutes,' she snapped back.

Rudy was silent beside her, but she knew enough about him to work out that he was suppressing a grin - because nothing seemed to give Rudy Steiner more joy than to get on her nerves. That idiot.

'Seriously, you need to have a little more faith,' Rudy pointed out.

'Why don't I show you a little faith when you give me reason to,' she replied levelly.

'Touché.'

Despite herself, Liesel felt a smile bite the corners of her lips and she irritably shoved it down. Screw that smug bastard, she wasn't giving him the satisfaction. Her eyes strayed over to him and found with a mixture of confusion and something else that he was staring right back at her. There was a moment of not quite knowing whether to look away or continue to stare in some sort of defiance, though why she was feeling so defiant at this turn of events was beyond her. Either it was Rudy's aggravating demeanor today, or it was the annoyance at being caught off guard by his gaze. Yellow. Goddamn yellow everywhere.

Not wishing to back down, she decided to proceed with the latter. For the next few minutes, the two engaged in what seemed to be a staring contest with no winner and no particular intention - though it did cause both of them to walk into several trees.

***Why She Stared***

**Yellow**

***Why He Stared***

**Pink**

Why pink?

It was the colour of the Book Thief's lips.

That dusty, faded shade of pink that curved into a grin filled his thoughts and made his poor heart pound at the same speed as his racing feet. As he looked at her, his wonderful best friend, all he could see was the tender flesh of her lips, and how much he would love to taste them against his own, run his fingers through her hair, hold her face in both hands as he kissed her... Shit. Stop.

He dragged his eyes away and tried to focus his thoughts on the silently observing river through the trees and soothe the ache in his chest where his heartbeat had suddenly skyrocketed.

They continued on in relative silence, carefully and precisely looking anywhere but each other's faces, where there resided a guaranteed increase in temperature and just general awkwardness. Liesel had forgotten her interrogation of Rudy and had settled with just accepting this apparent adventure. It was a beautiful day, so thankfully, there was a lot of pretence for them not looking at each other. She could easily be avoiding him and pass it off as taking in the scenery.

Suddenly, Rudy halted where he stood, causing Liesel to nearly trip over in her haste to look round.

'Thanks for the warning, arschloch,' she called, as he peered through the trees.

'We're here,' he said, grinning at her.

Liesel looked around in confusion. 'What do you mean? It's just trees.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' he said, shaking his head. He reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her closer, and pointed through the forest bones. 'Look, it's right there.'

Trying to ignore his proximity, she looked more closely through the green and brown teeth of the woods, and saw what seemed to be a clearing. Before she could distinguish any defining features, he dragged her eagerly towards what turned out to be a huge, beautiful tree, twisting upward into the sky and blocking out the sun.

Both simultaneously looked up in awe at the curling branches reaching across from horizon to horizon, weaving through the blue and creating green cracked glass shadows across the ground. Their eyes fell to the long, thick rope hanging from one of the lower branches (still a good six metres up) and they felt the longing bite their fingers.

It was around that point that they realised that Rudy was still gripping her hand, and they hurriedly took a step away from each other, him scratching the back of his head sheepishly. There was a sharp moment of not talking sliding across their foreheads, and then Rudy bounded towards the rope and leapt onto it, swinging back and forth.

Liesel watched in wonder as he flew through the air on the rope. 'Come on, you shitdick, it's fun!' he yelled to the sky.

A grin spread across her face and she found herself positively running towards the rope, and her wonderful, wonderful yellow best friend- nope, just the rope, just the rope. Rudy slid down it to the ground, looking smug.

'So is this reason enough to put a little faith in me?' he asked smirking.

'How did you find this place?' she cried smiling, and his eyes were painted with pink.

'Technically, I didn't. Kurt told me about it,' he shrugged.

It was one of those many occasions where Rudy Steiner would strategically leave out approximately eighty percent of the original story. Yes, Kurt had informed him of the place. Yes, he told his younger brother how to get there. But only when asked. The truth was, he wanted to please his Book Thief, maybe get a kiss in return. In all fairness to the romantic little bastard, he had fulfilled a lot of what he set out to do.

However, the latter of his aspirations was a little harder to achieve.

'So you didn't know where you were going?' Her eyebrows were caught halfway between her forehead and her eyes.

'I don't recall ever saying that.'

'I was right, wasn't I?'

'I suppose.'

'Thought so.'

Her hands reached up and gripped the rope. She looked back to Rudy and found him gazing at her with an odd expression on his face: what seemed like tenderness and something else, something she couldn't quite place. Then he seemed to snap out of it and grinned.

'Do you know what you're doing?' he said.

'Sure, how hard can it be?' She waved him off and jumped, letting the rope drag her a few feeble feet and back again. She sighed an slid down. 'I'm guessing that's not how you do it.'

'Nope,' he shook his head disapprovingly. 'Let me show you.'

Liesel stepped back and let Rudy grab hold of the rope. He pulled it back towards the trunk of the tree. There was a pause where he threw a reassuring glance at her, then he jumped, flying through the air as he gripped the rope in both hands. In truth, she didn't watch the swinging. She watched him, the sunlight spilling across his lemon hair in short bursts as he glided through the shadows.

Yellow. Yellow, yellow and more yellow. It burned beneath her eyelashes, blossoming up through the rust like a sunflower in mud. She looked away, let the flower wither and die and be swallowed by the cold hard metal. She couldn't afford to let it grow. She just couldn't.

'Oi saumensch, it's your turn,' she heard him call and she ran across to the him. 'Go stand by the tree,' he ordered, and she obeyed, standing by the wide trunk. Rudy pulled the rope over to her.

'Take it,' he said.

Her fingers grasped the rope just below his. He let go, and she stumbled a little, dragged by the uncomfortable angle against the overhanging branch. His hands flew out and caught her around her waist, and they froze. The pressure from his fingers against her ribs made the blood in her veins grind painstakingly down to a halt as she took in this surprising and unsettling turn of events.

Rudy had touched her several times throughout their lives, and she herself had administered several touches to him, mostly in the form of friendly - and some not so friendly - punches. They were not strangers to each other, far from it. He was her best friend, and she his. But suddenly, the sense that they were doing something wrong bit at their skin and stuck to their teeth. And Liesel could do nothing but internally curse her stupid, stupid body for being so damn susceptable to random emotions flying out of nowhere and slapping her in the face whenever Rudy happened to touch her.

Rudy's grip on her slid away and he took a step back, with the look of someone having a fierce battle with themselves.

***Did He Want To Let Go Of Her?***

**Take an educated guess.**

His hands burned, hanging limply by his side for lack of any better option (he couldn't exactly punch a tree in frustration - that would raise suspicion - and he couldnt walk forward, take her in his arms and kiss her - that would most likely raise some suspicion too). He looked up at her and forced a struggling and reluctant grin to rise to his face.

'You're pretty shit at this, aren't you?'

He could see the desperate relief flood her face at the distraction, before being replaced by gloriously happy indignation.

'Well you're pretty shit at teaching me,' she retorted. 'Now shut up and tell me how to do it properly.'

Rudy shrugged in defeat and grabbed the rope again, dragging it back towards the tree trunk. Liesel stood and watched as he leant back against the rope.

He looked at her expectantly. 'Well? Are you coming?'

'Oh yeah.'

She ran over to where he stood and took hold of the rope a second time. This time Rudy had moved well back, repeating feeble excuses in his head that she was a better learner without him stood there. Why he was trying to back himself out of it is beyond me, because there wasn't really anything to back out of, let alone worry about. But paranoia does strange things to humans, especially youths. It can be quite entertaining.

Liesel mimicked him, leaning back into the tree trunk, the rope tightly woven between her fingers. She looked over at Rudy for reassurance, who nodded encouragingly. A long dose of oxygen swelled up in her lungs, and she jumped.

And then she was flying, swooping through the golden green shadows cast by the bones of trees like a bird. The ground swung bizarrely beneath her feet and the wind ran its fingers through her tangled hair. The sunlight painted her skin as she grinned, and let out a long, ecstatic cry. She could feel the air brush past her face and she let her head tip back in elation as the cracked glass blue of the sky rippled across her eyes. The sky tasted of leaves. It was glorious.

Rudy watched her, a constant, aching smile threatening to appear with every turn of her head and every smile that lit up her dazed metallic eyes. Her face took on a dreamlike quality, as if she couldn't quite believe the reality of her current situation but was determinedly not questioning it for fear of it ending. He watched her, and hoped to God that she would always be this happy, this perfect. He looked at her, her face flushed, wrapped around the rope, and he wondered fleetingly what she would look like if she were wrapped around _him, _her fingers winding into his hair, the pink of her lips caught between his own. Then he pinched himself hard and tried to forget the sweet, faded shade of pink that he loved so very much, and the girl he loved even more.

Seems to me a fairly impossible feat when the girl was stood in front of him, still gripping the rope, her almost-German hair falling over her dizzy smile, trying to catch her breath. But what do I know? It's not like I've ever had to struggle with adolescence. In a world with so much suffering to be witnessed, I suppose that's one small upside to this job.

'It's your turn, dummkopf.' Rudy was dragged out of his reverie to see Liesel still gripping the rope, still grinning that whimsical grin as if not quite out of the dream she had been caught up in, and he felt his insides clench with raw, tumbling adoration.

_Kiss her. Just kiss her._

His body was prepared to act at a moment's notice from his brain. His feet twitched unconsciously with a longing to walk up to her and sweep her off her feet like the swing or something equally manly, but in retrospect, he probably wasn't big enough to pull off that kind of action anyway. His heart urged him, positively begged him, wrapped its arteries around his ankles until he agreed to its terms and conditions, to just walk over there and steal her lips, like she had stolen him.

_Just kiss her._

But something kept him rooted to the spot, something heavy and constricting tying him down like barbed wire. Was it fear? Most likely. But what of? Now that's a good question.

***Some Possible Reasons to Fear for Rudy Steiner***

**+ Embarrassment: quite likely**

**+ Insecurity: again, quite likely**

**+ Rejection: most certainly**

**+ Fear of losing her: inevitably**

He was bound by fear. It dripped from his skin and blinded him. He was afraid, because he had everything to lose, and when someone has everything to lose, they tend not to try and risk it. Ironically enough, it was only a few months until he threw everything on the table so readily, so boldly, so terrified, and finally - finally - received his due.

'Well, if you don't want a turn, I guess I'll just have another go,' he heard her eager voice somewhere far away and her yell of exhilaration as she began to fly a second time.

God, she was so wonderful. His saumensch. His Book Thief.

She slid down once again, her feet hitting the ground, and Rudy was once more brought back to his surroundings.

'Christ, Liesel, why don't I just cut the crap and leave you and the rope to it?' Rudy called and heard her laugh sounding against the trees.

'Very funny,' came her sarcastic reply. 'Do you want a turn or not?'

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, and if Liesel were only a few metres closer, he would have earned himself a cuff around the head.

Liesel stepped back from the rope and Rudy, nearly tripping over a highly conspicuously positioned root sticking out the ground, mounted it gleefully, kicking off and swinging back and forth, trying forcefully to forget the way his heart was increasing in speed with each minute that he was around her.

The hours slipped by in a giddy whirl of crying out in ecstasy as their world became sky, arguing over who got to have a go next, and using the time spent waiting to silently and tenderly observe the other as they flew back and forth.

Liesel watched Rudy as he swung through the air, his grip tight on the rope, his face split into a wide grin, and tried not to smile. There was love deep down, stirring in her somewhere in the dusty region of her heart that she never had the interest to explore. The question was how she loved him. He was her best friend. Generally, she could pinpoint the line between platonic and something else entirely, but some days, days such as these, the line grew distorted and the term friendship just didn't seem to fit the description any more. Some days she wanted to slap him, some days she wanted to build castles out of mud with him, and some days she just run at him, and do what, she wasn't quite sure, but she knew that whatever it was, it could barely be confined to the boundaries of 'friendship'.

Yellow tinged her eyes, as it had so many times today, and she wondered why. It was a confusing and unknown emotion that pinched her ribs and caught in her lungs, an she didn't understand what its purpose was. So, like so many other things, she oppressed it, buried it deep down below her chest and kept it captive there, until she would work out what to do with it.

***An Observation***

**This resolve lasted a sum of about two months.**

**In the arms of the icy river, not far from where they were now,**

**She finally gave in.**

Of course, when adolescence hits and awkwardness becomes the essence of the human soul, life sometimes enjoys screwing them around with the desperately vulnerable creatures that stumble around the Earth in a confused mess of emotion, rebellion and longing.

So was it necessarily very surprising when the events that followed occurred? Absolutely not.

It was a simple misunderstanding of sorts, albeit a devastatingly ill timed one. What was painfully ironic about the situation was it could have easily been avoided by anyone else in the world. But of course, it was Liesel and Rudy. And on a day when pink and yellow ruled their eyes and stole their hearts, something like this was bound to happen.

So how was it that Jesse Owens found himself laid on top of the unsuspecting Book Thief, a mere few centimetres of panicked breath all that separated their lips? How indeed.

'Rudy, stop hogging it. It's my go,' Liesel said indignantly as Rudy kicked off again.

'You said that before,' he called as he swung to astounding heights. 'It's always your go.'

'Well it's not exactly _your_ go anymore,' she pointed out irritably.

'You know, it's so hard to care when you're having this much fun,' he called cheerfully as his voice swooped across the trees.

In retrospect, it was hard to understand the reasoning behind her actions as she wasn't sure what she wanted as an outcome. As his altitude began to deplete, Liesel took her chance. Fool.

Misjudging his speed, she caught the rope as he swung past, and it threw her to the side like a broken toy, dragging a fairly surprised Rudy with her. She felt the leaf bones shatter under her, the roots bite her spinal chord like rock candy. There was tumbling and rolling and yelps of pain and cracked glass eyes until they ground to a stop at the foot of the tree.

When Liesel finally dared to open her eyes again, she was both shocked and disturbed to find Rudy barely even an inch from her face. His icy blue eyes were wide and frozen in acute, devastating understanding, and she could see herself reflected in them, only her and the horriffingly close pink of her lips. They stared at each other, stuck at a stalemate, her buried under him and terrified to move. The moment she moved would be the moment they would be forced at gunpoint to acknowkedge their proximity, the marvellous, terrible truth that was their current situation.

She could taste his slow, measured breaths on her face, across her lips, and she could feel her heart failing, the needle sharp longing stab her through the lungs, dragging the oxygen from her teeth like barbed wire. He was so close. He was so very, wonderfully, horribly close. He tasted of yellow. Such a beautiful colour.

Rudy was centimetres from her face, his lips an inhale of air away from hers, close enough to kiss or bite. His mind had shut down on itself, silencing any articulate thoughts that he may have had. Only pink, only goddamn pink and the short, fluttering sound of her panicked breathing. He wanted to lean down and steal the panic from her mouth, just feel her lips against his, taste the pink on the edge of his tongue, graze his teeth across it. Just a few more millimetres and he could have claimed her lips as his own, like he had dreamed of doing since he first saw her, and yet it felt like miles. How could such a short distance be so unbearably far?

_Kiss her. Just kiss her._

Oh how he wanted to kiss her. Just forget the Führer and the bombs and the Victor Chemmels. He wanted a victory.

'Rudy?' Liesel said, testing the air on her tongue as if it were poisenous.

'Yeah?'

He knew the grin that was forced to her face wasn't real, he could tell by the way her lips trembled as they curved shakily into a smile, but it was enough of a cue to realise that she just wanted to laugh the whole thing off and forget it as quickly and discreetly as if it were a dead body. Of course she wanted to forget.

'Rudy, get the hell off me, I can't breathe,' her face was a little too bright for conviction, but he scrambled to his feet regardless.

'It's your own damn fault saumensch,' he threw at her, trying to keep the disappointment from stinging his words.

Liesel tried to sit up, her lips in the shape of a retort, but it tore from her throat in a wince of pain and she fell back into the ground. Literally no thought crossed Rudy's mind as he practically sprinted to her side. Her fingers had crept up over her shoulder to her back as she traced her shoulder blades for mines. Another wince caught in her throat and he knew her fingers had stepped on a mine.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

'I dunno, must have scraped my back when we fell,' she said thoughtfully. Their eyes fell upon the root that jutted up from the ground like a broken bone a few feet from them. 'Shit,' she muttered.

'Does it hurt?' he said.

'No Rudy. It feels like a freakin pillow punched me,' she snapped, and another wince was caught between her gritted teeth.

It took a lot of restraint to stop himself from wrapping his arms around her and cradling her until the pain stopped. But he didn't. Because he had everything to lose.

'Can you get up?'

'Probably,' she shrugged. She placed her hands either side of herself and pushed, strain pulsing through her limbs, before she collapsed down again. 'Just give me a minute,' she gasped, grimacing in discomfort.

'Let me see.' He heard the words leave his lips and he wondered what the hell was going through his head. Liesel looked at him for a moment, her metallic eyes searching, then what looked like defeat blossomed across her features and she began to tug at the buttons of her shirt.

Rudy kept his gaze averted as she slid her shirt from her shoulders, and the back of her neck, then her shoulders blades, then her spinal column were slowly revealed. He knelt behind her, and studied the long, angry read scratch that stretched across from her shoulders to the folds of her shirt. There was a smudge of blood towards the back of her neck and he brushed it with his fingers. The longing to lean forward and press his lips against it, against her neck, her shoulder, her lips, burned in his throat, yet he kept his distance. He reached up and dragged the almost-German hair hanging down across her back over her shoulder, and he felt her tense under his touch. A pang of regret pinched at his palms as she flinched away from him a little.

Liesel felt her eyes grow hazy, tinging at the edges of her peripheral vision with yellow, as she felt his breath drip across her neck. Her skin bured with it as he ran his fingertips across the long, stinging scratch, though the pain had evaporated minutes ago, as if it had never been there. It was that lemon shade of yellow that made her want to turn, take his face in both hands and kiss him for all his golden worth.

But she couldn't. She couldn't afford the high price. No more yellow. She couldn't afford it.

She felt the warmth of his hands withdraw and she let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding in. Though the lack of his touch was suddenly overwhelming, she could still feel his shallow, measured breathing against her shoulder. They stayed there, two adolescents frozen with an indistinguishable mix of fear and desire. It suddenly struck Liesel that she was, in her present state, only partly clothed. she hurriedly dragged her shirt back over her shoulders, and stumbled to her feet, backing away and keeping her gaze fixedly away from him.

Rudy got slowly to his feet, taking in the confused, sharp metallic glint of her rusty eyes, and knew he had never known anyone more wonderful.

The words were old in his throat but always waiting hopefully behind his teeth for release. They were battered and worn, chipped away by the continual refusals, but never any less optimist. They ached in his lungs, positively dripped from his mouth. But what could they bring except another rejection? They were cursed words, he was sure, yet it didn't stop them slipping from him and falling to the ground like snow.

'So,' he said. 'How about a kiss saumensch?'

Rudy could have sworn he saw a flicker of a smile at the corners of her lips, but whatever was there was replaced rapidly by a soft, cold expression. 'In your dreams Steiner.'

He grinned. He knew the answer before it came, and in retrospect, he had probably thought that knowing the outcome before it came would soften the blow. Wrong. He still felt the familiar stab of hurt puncture his heart. But he grinned regardless, laughed it off as if it were nothing, like he had taught himself to do whenever she tossed his words to the ever growing pile of his rotting hopes. He grinned, because what else could he do? He loved her too much to give her anything less. He grinned, because it was enough for her.

Liesel smiled softly, and he felt his heart ache. 'Come on saukerl, let's go home.'

He nodded. 'Yeah, I think we've had enough damage for one day.'

'It's funny how one of us always seems to end up injured on our outings,' she commented dryly.

'Eh, you can't have a good adventure without breaking a few bones.'

'-Or necks.'

They laughed, and began to wander leisurely back towards the Amper River, leaving behind the pink and the yellow in favour of the far calmer, slightly less temperamental ice blue and rust brown. Beautiful, sweet colours they were, no adulthood corrupting them, just the raw, childish core that resided in both of them.

As for Rudy, as they walked back through the bones of trees, through the bones of their childhoods, he wondered if he'd ever receive his victory.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Hey guys. Let's play: spot the Doctor Who reference! Free imaginary cookies for anyone who does.**

**I'm so sorry that this took so long, it wasn't my intention, but this was harder to write than I expected. I hope you enjoyed it, and please leave a review to tell me what you think.**


	11. Never

**A/N: Hey guys. I'm so very sorry that this took so long but I have had a whole load of writers block, so please bear with me.**

**Keep in mind that this chapter may be quite dark, as well as slightly complicated. I'm not sure how I'm going to pull it off, but I'll try and keep it as not-totally-confusing as I can. Please note that it takes place over two separate points in their life.**

**However this turns out, enjoy.**

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1948*<strong>

She could remember it well.

The sickening twist of her stomach, the throbbing of her skull, the ringing of church bells in her ears as the dark fog devoured her. Though it was four years prior, it still stung her thoughts like the curl of alcohol in her veins, the flowers of poison born from the earth of her lungs.

She could remember it well.

But she tries to forget.

Just like she tries to forget the fact it's October. Again.

It was coming up for Liesel's nineteenth October, an ugly, mournful month of the sky's rebellious tantrums and temperamental howls. Autumn swept in like a dose of fresh hormones and the elements reacted accordingly. Angrily even. Because October was like that.

Dragging in its wake would be the silenced, meaningless words that Liesel both cherished and hated deeply. Words that would both drag sleep from the edges of her eyelashes and eat her from the inside out. Yet they also caused a golden swell of bittersweet happiness in her arteries. There were two words that always stood at the forefront of her mind.

Mama. Papa.

Over the years, it had grown to become part of her life. The aching loss that burned a hole right through her had grown dusty: old and worn but still there. It had come to be an irrevocable piece of her - or lack of - that she had moulded herself around. Protected by the tender flesh of her heart, her loss had dissolved into the background. The Big Bad Wolf lurking in the trees, not seen but present, ready to pounce, ready to kill.

There was only one weapon she had when the antagonist decided to draw its sword.

Her best friend.

Then there was the day. The actual damn day. The earth-shattering, sanity-destroying twenty four hours that stripped her to her bones and beat her to the ground like a dog in the dirt. And in the dirt she stayed, long after the punches were thrown, her limbs bruised and twisted, her skin stained with the ashes of her home, until Rudy dragged her out and brought back to life.

7th October.

How she hated that day.

Her dreams were painted the colour of a fiery sky. Her eyes burning with the faces of her lost ones. Her Mama's big heart with miles of hidden storage, still and silent and empty. She slept among the rubble, no insults forming on her dry, cardboard mouth. No anger left to love her daughter with.

And her Papa, her molten silver eyes hidden beneath his cold, snowstained eyelids. She remembered the barbed wire tears dragging through her throat as she sobbed over his silent accordion lungs. Her wonderful Papa who planted the words in her chest and watched them grow.

Nightmares of bombs and dead heaven haunted her troubled sleep.

But the boy with lemon hair remained. His arms open, comforting and familiar, where she'd bury herself.

After the fifteenth October, he stayed.

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1944*<strong>

***In a Small, Square Hospital Room***

**A boy with lemon hair sits in a painfully uncomfortable chair.**

**His back aches. He hasn't slept.**

**Right beside him is a young girl passed out on a bed.**

**She won't wake up.**

**The question is, how did she get there?**

The sky that glared through the window that day was grey: a sharp, stormy blue grey that promised a good deal of downpour in a few hours time. The streets outside shimmered dully, painted silver with past Autumn weeping. The canvas was littered with dust, cigarette butts and leaf corpses.

The next October was here. The fifteenth. The aftermath.

It had blown in with a stray gust of wind, like many things did in Liesel and Rudy's lives. It crept up, claws bared, a morosely sweet grin on its sly face, ready to thieve. With dead tree bones and a thundercloud heart, it dripped slowly into their system, corroding the bones and grappling their lungs.

Yes. It was here.

They anticipated its coming. They knew it would always return. But maybe they hoped to hold on to some kind of sanity - no matter how paper thin, no matter how torn - just a little longer. It was their anchor of sorts, it kept the worst of the storms away.

Forgetting. And forgetting. And forgetting.

When would they remember?

They hoped never.

Never let it return, they pleaded. Never let it burn in our throats and swallow us up like the Himmel Street snow. Never let us lose ourselves again. Never, never, never.

But now October was here, a delicate, ticking time bomb buried under their rib cages, counting down the days with broken fingers. Each second was another fragment of self-control discarded, another flurry of ash from the bones of heaven that would not go away. Never wasn't an option.

***How Many Days Would The Time Bomb Count?***

**Seven.**

So how was it that the Book Thief found herself in hospital at the age of fifteen with a disturbing amount of alcohol burning in her veins?

I suppose the question answers itself.

Let me take you back twenty one hours. To the day that time forgot but she could never forget.

Never.

Pretend he's here. Pretend he's here.

In a grand, square room with glass eyes and a wood and nails heart, a girl lay on her bed in a mess of duvet and sweat. Her metallic brown eyes - normally so sharp and acute - had bluntened, rusting right to the core. They gazed ahead at nothing, empty and cold and wondering.

Wondering if she could get through the next twenty four hours. Wondering if those hours would be kind to her. Wondering how long she could go without remembering. Wondering why the hell she was alone.

Why was she alone?

The answer was simple. The boy wasn't there.

She could remember the exact moment. The exact moment she felt herself break. The first chip in the glass. It could only possibly get worse.

Everything was grey. The rippling, tin foil river that stretched from one edge of their eyelids to the other was painted with dull, brushing silver strokes. The two of them stood shivering, despite being huddled in thick layers of clothing, as they gazed out across the soft, sad landscape.

There were no words; there was no need for words. There was no doubt in their minds what the other was thinking. It was just too easy, as if it were stamped across their foreheads in thick black ink. It was obvious in the way that the ice of his eyes scraped across the horizon, the way the rust crept across her skin.

October was here.

It was Rudy that chose crack the surface of the silence.

'Liesel?' he said quietly, hardly making a sound, as if the air was made of carpet.

'Yeah?'

'I'm going away.'

It hit like a punch to the gut, leaving a sore and tender mark somewhere below her ribs, dangerously close to her arteries. But her eyes stayed fixed on the rippling water. Her expression never faltered.

'Where?' she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

'Somewhere in the country,' he replied.

'When?'

'In a few hours' time.'

'How long?'

'A couple of days.'

'Why?'

It was the last question that dragged another dose of silence from behind his teeth, and he looked down at his feet. He could hear it. The fear and hurt smothered in flat, grey indifference. He could not see her face but he knew it was strictly trained to betray no emotion. His wonderful, wonderful Book Thief was highly skilled at that.

'Because Papa doesn't want to stay here,' he said simply.

It was true. Herr Steiner was a brave man, one of the good ones that did not flaunt the neat, black swastika stamped lovingly to his chest like a sainthood. But he was human. Humans are ruled by fear, held hostage within their own ribcages with no key for release. He had been lucky to have missed the birth, and he would be damned if he stayed for the birthday party.

But where luck had saved Alex Steiner from witnessing the heartbeat of a bomb that ended all heartbeats, Rudy and Liesel remained. They were pulled from the rubble, from the womb of their shattered homes and cast into a reality they weren't ready to live.

An anniversary of destruction. The wedding of loss and grief.

October was here.

Liesel didn't reply. Her numb fingers had unconsciously knotted with the rough fabric that lined the inside of her pockets. Still, she kept her face immovably still. Like she knew she had to.

'Will you be okay?' she heard him ask, somewhere far, far away.

She felt it rise in her throat like acid, bubbling and burning and ever so bitterly sweet. It flooded her mouth and spilt from her lips, a deliciously poisenous mess of fear and heartbreak and anger, but it was released strangely enough in the shape of a laugh.

It blossomed in the air before her, ringing and needle sharp and venomous. It bounded across the river, echoing wildly in her thoughts. Such a glorious sound it was, so cold to touch. She was afraid of it; it spread through her veins like frost. But she kept laughing, and laughing, because if she stopped, she would cry. She would cry and she would scream and she would drown in her grief, a watery grave of nightmares and Himmel Street ash. She laughed until her the tender flesh of her throat was torn, and her lungs ached. She laughed, because what else could she do?

Soon, the laughter died down and she smiled sweetly.

'No.'

Then she was running away, her feet pounding the earth, and Rudy calling her name over and over was the last thing she consciously heard as the wind and the laughter drifted into her mind like clouds and her breathing dragged the oxygen through her heaving chest. Running and running. Keep moving or it will all catch up.

She sprinted for 18 Grande Strasse, the home she couldn't quite fit into, yet the only home she knew now that her's was buried in cleanly swept ash and concrete. Harsh, white sunlight spilt across her as she ran through the teeth of shadows, looming up from her peripheral vision like mist. The bones of trees cracked the ground into pieces.

The world was fragmented beneath her. Everything was breaking.

But she kept running.

Because there was nothing else left.

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1948*<strong>

He was stood by the river when she finally found him. Close enough to the water to send pretty patterns spiralling through the glass surface with the edge of his shoe. Even closer to the spot that he had resided on, four years prior at the age of fifteen. It was generally where she found him at this time of year, with the exception of the eighteenth October, where he had found her by his front door (this occasion had been swept under the rug as quickly and discretely as it had happened, and neither had mentioned it since).

'Hey,' he called to her as she headed over.

'Hey,' she replied, pulling her wool coat closer about her.

'So how is this lovely October finding you?' he asked as he shivered.

'Pretty shit. You?'

'Eh, not really my type of weather.' He grinned at her and she smiled, but not before noticing the cold creeping into his eyes in a way that made her wonder if the grin was genuine. Then again, it never was at this time of year.

They stood gazing out at the river, at the slowly healing wound that was their life. The raw flesh of October ached, burned, left them bleeding and vulnerable. But over time, the wound grew stronger, less susceptible to attack.

Little Red Riding Hood was growing up. The Big Bad Wolf wasn't so scary anymore.

Or that's what she told herself.

***A Case Of Deja Vu***

**The same place.**

**The same day.**

**The same people.**

**The same words.**

'Liesel?'

'Yeah?'

'I'm going away.'

And suddenly the wolf pounced. The wound stripped of protection. Another punch to the gut. And the Book Thief was left broken once again. The cold melted away like the falling of the curtain, and all that remained was the sound of her heart dropping.

'What?' she said in disbelief.

Rudy looked at her with the expression of someone who didn't like the taste of his own answer. 'I'm going away.'

It took several tries to get the next word out. 'Why?' It came out in a thin cry scraping from the back of her throat.

He took a step towards her, and she saw his eyes were dark and troubled. 'Because Papa doesn't want to stay here.'

A case of deja vu. Only this time, she knew what came next.

She gaped him. 'You can't,' she shook her head frantically.

Rudy took a deep breath as if to steady himself. 'He wants me to look at colleges.' He sighed and shrugged, running his hand distractedly through his hair. 'I don't have a choice Liesel.'

'No, don't you dare,' she spat. 'Don't you dare do that to me again.'

Distress crept into his eyes like frost. 'Liesel-'

'No, you can't!' she cried, backing swiftly away from him. 'You can't do that!'

He reached out for her, 'Liesel, I-'

'No,' she flinched away from him, as if stung.

'But-'

'No. No, you can't,' her voice trembled wildly, and she shook her head again, as if she could free herself from this reality.

'Liesel-' he pleaded.

'You said you were going to stay!' she burst out passionately. 'You said you'd never leave me!'

'I know but-'

'You said you would stay, Rudy! You promised-'

'Liesel, please!' he yelled, his voice ringing sharply in the silence, and she saw the silver racetracks that cut across his cheeks.

The words froze to her teeth, sharp and metallic and stinging the edge of her tongue. She swallowed them. The urge to step forward and hug him rose and swelled in her chest, but it burst and withered in the frost-bitten air before she could do anything.

'I'm sorry, Liesel,' he whispered, looking out at the river. 'I'm sorry.'

Liesel didn't know how long she stood there, letting the cold corrode her, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. With nothing else to say, she turned and walked away, hearing the soft crunch of Autumn bones beneath her boots. She felt him catch her arm, and she looked at him, desperation grappling his ice blue eyes.

'Will you be okay?' he asked tentatively.

It took all her strength not to spit in his face. She forced herself to look up at him measuredly, the words ready and burning in her mouth.

'Fuck you.'

And then she was striding away through carcass of her summer, her sanity, and only the silence followed her, because for the first time, her name was not on his lips. He did not call after her.

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1944*<strong>

Liesel lay on her bed, drowning in her duvet. Her fingers unconsciously clenched and loosened, trying to find something to hold onto. Someone to hold onto.

She had kept running. She had kept running even after she passed through the gates of her home. The door was locked, they must have gone out. So she ran around the back of the house where the majority of her thefts had occurred, and clambered through the window. She ran through the halls, up the stairs. She didn't stop until she was in her bedroom, safe and secure and alone. Then she collapsed, her heart thundering, her breathing loud and shaking.

_Pretend he's here. Pretend he's here._

The feeling of loneliness had closed in on her a long time ago. It closely resembled the sensation of sliding into cold, deep water, heavy and constricting and helplessly terrifying: her lungs were constructed from knots of ice sharp barbed wire, her vision shifting and distorting. It crept up on her like vines, curling around her limbs and slowly, slowly tightening. She couldn't breath.

Sleep.

It was the first thought that she could genuinely distinguish from the tangled string of words. And it made some form of sense. She stumbled to her feet, focusing directly on what she was doing at that current moment if only to prevent the grappling panic seeping in and drowning her.

Stand up. Put one foot in front of the other. Walk. Lie down. Sleep. Each movement was mapped out with mind-numbing precision, and that's exactly what she needed: mind-numbing. Her thoughts were sharp to touch and dangerous; one puncture in her delicate mind, and everything would corrode and collapse, like a continuous drip of acid.

Don't think. Just don't think. Stand up. Put one foot in front of the other. Walk. Lie down. Sleep. Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. Unfortunately, the last task was a little more difficult to achieve.

Now she was here, drifting in and out of silent reality and fragmented fantasy. Every now and then, she would see a figure at the corner of her peripheral vision, and she would turn her head hopefully, but there was no one. An illusion, a trick of the light.

She wanted to sleep. To be swallowed up by the warm, black oblivion and forget, if only for a few hours. Just cease to exist for a little while.

But the hinges of her eyes dripped with rust. Images of her Papa sleeping soundly among the rubble, the last heartbeat in her little brother's eyes, all the wonderful people she loved and lost branded to the insides of her eyelids, dragging the cries of panic from her throat and the delicate peace from her thoughts.

Adults often had remedies for insomnia. Maybe there would be something in the house. Before she knew what she was doing, she was on her feet and stumbling towards the door.

In the pristine confines of the the porcelain bathroom, she found the drug cabinet above the smooth white sink. No key resided snugly in the heart of the lock, and she was forced to give up on the pills that no doubt resided behind the cool glass.

But the champagne was right there, sat in a pretty, opened box at the corner of the Burgermeister's office. It glinted mischievously in the half light, daring her to reach in and steal. Her fingers ached to thieve; it had been so long, so very long since she had received her due in robbery.

The smooth, heavy bottle was resting in her hands before she had even thought about it. A sigh of makeshift peace washed from her lips and she clutched the bottle to her chest, her heartbeat, for she knew it to be the only thing that could possibly save the slowly accelerating rhythm in her chest.

Her wandering feet lead her up the marble staircase and she allowed them without objection, for the frosted, green glass consumed her eyes, wonderful and comforting, like an anchor of sorts. The only thing that kept her sanity from dissolving to dust right there across the floor.

***A Sense Of Irony***

**It's a shame really, when you think about it.**

**Considering that her so called 'anchor'**

**would be her sure path to destruction.**

Upon reaching her bedroom, she fell to her knees, ignoring the groan of protest from her joints. A burst of fizzling gold spilled from the throat of the bottle as she yanked the stopper off, sloshing enthusiastically across the rich, crimson rug. The sweet, stinging scent of delicious poisen filled her nose and she suppressed a sneeze. Oh that sickening, glorious stench. It was mouth wateringly familiar.

Gripping the bottle in tight fingers, she raised it solemnly toward the ceiling. 'To Papa,' she said, taking a swig of the sharp, bubbling liquid.

The memories crashed over her like a wave, tumbling and bittersweet like the bites that littered the tender flesh of her throat where the alcohol had sunk its teeth. Nostalgia shivered through her veins, leaving her trembling in a frosty pool of remembrance, a helpless prisoner to her own past.

She could remember the taste of the putrid gold sizzling on her tongue as she toasted with her Papa. The cool evening air drying the stray brushes of black paint that plastered their worn fingers. The soft, regal hum of the accordion in the background, squeezing a steady, wheezing melody out through its grinning teeth. She could even remember the neat click of the keys being expertly pressed at the hands of her father, his silver eyes melting and cheerful. Her Papa's songs tasted of champagne, and the warm sleepy bliss that blossomed beneath her eyelids and left them heavy.

'To Papa,' she repeated, almost defiantly, as if it were a her secret, her pride, and knocked back another dose of the alcohol. A lilting tune sounded quietly in her head, a lullaby from the heart of her accordion Papa, and she swayed to it, still gripping the bottle. Her head felt light, as if it were separate from her body. She swallowed another gulp of gold, feeling it shudder through her system.

The accordion clicked and wheezed quietly beside her. He sat there, his lined face soft and smiling, his molten silver eyes glinting dully in the half light. He smiled down at her, his cigarrette smoke, 'your majesty' smile that she had missed so sorely.

'Papa,' she grinned up at him as he crafted the notes into songs.

He didn't reply. He only smiled, and stroked her hair. She took his rough fingers in her own and held them, relishing their warmth and their familiarity.

'Never leave me,' she said quietly.

With every dose of the delicious acid weaving through her thoughts, the centimetres of champagne slowly depleted from the bottle. It had been so long. So very, impossibly long since his kind face had disappeared from her days; since the rust had finally grown accustomed to reflecting emptiness, not her wonderful Papa's silver eyes. Since silence had replaced the majestic buzz of his music. An empty house, broken and pounded the ground. Snow instead of songs. It was all gone.

Where had he been? Where had he gone?

Gone...

Oh.

It was then that she remembered. The memory of finding him on a bed of rubble, no steady heartbeat pounding a rhythm. Snow instead of songs.

His fingers suddenly grew cold, insubstantial as clouds, and she felt the sweat on her own palms as they slid away from her. The notes grew strained, each sound desecreted and murdered with each punch to the keys. With every turn of her head, she lost sight of him, as if he were a shadow at the edge of her eyelids.

'Papa,' she pleaded to the thin air.

She couldn't see him anymore, but the accordion continued to spit out loud, lurching notes that made her head ache. The room spun dangerously as she got to her unsteady feet, still gripping the bottle. Champagne leaked across her fingers. The bottle was empty, the last of it staining her teeth.

_Pretend he's here. Pretend he's here._

Blood throbbed into her head, making her eyes blur and her ears ring. She could hear her Mama's voice somewhere far far away, the irritable clipping tones of her Mama. She called her name.

She spun round wildly, to try and find the source of the familiar sound. 'Mama?' she cried. 'Mama, please!'

_Pretend she's here. Pretend someone is here._

She could hear words, words with no meaning, jibberish, a 'saumensch' and a 'saukerl' thrown over her head, funeral bells, a grey man with a grey voice, wails of grief, coughing, coughing, blood, a train. It played in her head in monochrome, reversed. Ash and snow and blood and words. Her life story.

The sounds chattered and screeched in her ears like a swarm of insects, sending her head spiralling, her blood pulsing, her heartbeat skyrocketing. A scream of frustration tore from her throat, the bottle hit the wall, shattering the noise, pieces of her heart spilling across the ground.

She sank to the ground, ignoring the cries of pain that littered her hands and knees as the glass left its bite. Her scraped, bleeding fingers crept up and covered her ears as she rocked back and forth, trying to block out the screams and the cries and the endless, nonsensical words that beat her to the ground.

The noises blurred as she felt the darkness start to close in. She was alone.

_Pretend someone is here. Pretend anyone is here._

As she lies curled up on a bed of broken glass and lost sanity, she pretends her circumstances were different. She pretends he had stayed. She pretends his arms wrap around her. His breath is on her neck, in her hair. His lips on her forehead. His ice blue eyes soft and childish. How it was supposed to be.

_Pretend he's here. Pretend he's here._

It was her best friend, her uncompromised, undistorted best friend that filled her broken thoughts as the warm, black oblivion dragged her away.

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1948*<strong>

***A Small, Unnecessary Note***

**The rain began a few minutes after the screaming stopped.**

It was a good four hours before it began snowing stones against Liesel Meminger's windowpane.

Her fists ached with the patterns of the wallpaper, her throat was torn and tender from her muffled cries of anger and fear into her bedsheets. Her clothes lay discarded by the door, having changed into her nightclothes. It was a sort of preparation for her hibernation, though really, she hoped it would convince herself to sleep.

Of course, sleep was unobtainable. It always was.

Alcohol of any kind was strictly prohibited on the second floor of the Bürgermeister's house, let alone her bedroom. After the fifteenth October, trying to blunt grief by chemical means was not an option anymore.

She sat with her back against the wall, her head tipped back, her eyes bitter and dead. She had given up several hours ago, but she couldn't know that. Time was distorted before her, a long line of nothing leading to nothing leading to nothing. Nothing before, nothing after.

She had already surrendered to the darkness that would no doubt come for her eventually, like it had years ago. Now she waited, the screams dead in her throat, the fighting gone from her. Let it come.

It was then that the stones hit her window.

The first, she ignored it. The rain was heavy and misleading. They sounded like footsteps on thick carpet. Several times she had perked up, her eyes on the door. But the Bürgermeister was at one of his many meetings and Ilsa was away, having left assuming that she would be staying with Rudy for these next few days. The house was empty. She was alone.

The second stone made her look up. But rain continued to pour, loudly, mockingly beating the window.

A third, a fourth, a fifth. It was the sixth that made her crawl over to the window in defeat and look out.

'Rudy?' It spilled from her in disbelief, as she gripped the windowsill, staring out at the figure on the ground.

He stood there, looking hopefully up at her as she slid into view. He was clothed in rain, it wore him like a coat. His lemon yellow hair was stained dark with precipitation, she could see him shivering in the cold. He wore no shoes. A sound much like a whimper of relief fell from her lips as she touched the glass where he stood. Jesse Owens.

It was him. It was actually him. She felt as if her knees would collapse on her any minute with the weight of the lightness she felt grapple her body (slightly ironically). A stroke of panic cut through her and with it came the binding determination to keep him in sight, not let him disappear like everything else. He would not - could not - disappear. She probably couldn't survive that. His name fogged up the window before her as it slid from her teeth.

He mouthed words at her that she couldn't quite work out, but she could guess. She reached out a trembling finger and pointed downward, indicating the library window that was always open, a nostalgic pastime that had never gone away. He flashed a grateful grin up at her, and hurriedly disappeared out of view.

Liesel stood staring through the rain at the spot he just resided on as she tried to work out if any of it was real or not. If this wonderful event was some corrupted game that played out at the forefront of her mind, a play on a stage. He had to be real. He _was_ real. Oh God, please let him be real. Her fingers itched to touch him, feel him, understand that he was in fact here. But she couldn't see him.

The rain sounded like footsteps. Hammering against the window like bullets. It was hard to tell which were real and which weren't. But then that was her life now. Forever trying to distinguish the real and the pretend when both wear the same disguise. Was he even here? She had no idea.

The door opened, and she started in surprise, turning to see him there. Actually physically there. Not the subject of pretending. Not a freak accident of her imagination. Just her wonderful, wonderful Rudy.

She stumbled shakily to her feet as he shut the door behind her. She looked at him. She waited. She waited for the words that would no doubt come next, because Rudy didn't know how to shut up.

'I'm staying,' Rudy announced, dripping across the carpet.

There you go.

Liesel stood in her nightgown staring at him in surprise, her limbs frozen, her rusty eyes gleaming with hope. She drank in the sight of him: from his damp, messy hair to his familiar ice blue eyes to his muddy, cold bare feet. Every detail of him, each raindrop sticking to his skin, was devoured by her eyes because he was here. He was really here.

Her Rudy. Her saukerl. He had come back.

The bruises moaned where her knuckles had met the wall. They throbbed, positively ached to fly at his face, his stomach, anywhere they could reach. She wanted to punch him, beat him, scratch, bite, kick until all her fury was spent. And yet she stayed exactly where she was.

Why?

Because her lips ached too.

They ached to press against his. To taste each line and crevice, to hear her name release from his mouth where before there was silence. To know that it was him and only him. That he was back here with her.

She tried to speak, but found her throat dry and sore from her screams. 'Why?' she managed to choke out hoarsely.

'I couldn't do it again, Liesel,' he shook his head, sending a waterfall of rain shaking loose from his lemon hair. 'You'd never forgive me. Hell, I'd never forgive myself. When I told Papa he just looked at me and said that he never expected anything less.'

He took a deep breath. 'So I am staying.' He looked up at her sheepishly, 'That is, if you want me to.'

Liesel said nothing. Her rusty eyes were wide, her lips parted in that familiar expression that he had only ever seen once before. Buried waist deep in the icy embrace of the December river, as he handed her that damn book. The face of a revelation.

The question was, what was the revelation?

Rudy opened his mouth to say more - what exactly, he wasn't quite sure - but before any sound escaped his mouth, the Book Thief marched towards him, threw her arms around his neck, and pulled his lips down to hers. He staggered a little in surprise, the words he had ready falling away, but he didn't give a damn. One arm wove automatically around her waist, the other hand tangling longingly in her hair, pulling her closer.

She tasted of salt, and crying, and screams, and the sweetest shade of Autumn. The non-October side of Autumn: the leaves and the trees and the rain. He stole the grief from her tongue, the weeping from her throat. It was all gone. He had her pressed close to him, and he didn't want to let go.

The fury ebbed away, replaced by sweet, shivering longing sliding across her like the tide. There was no anger left.

She pulled away, cradling his face in both hands. 'Never leave me,' she pleaded, tears spilling from her eyes.

He pushed his lips tenderly to the shining racetracks that clung to her cheeks. 'Never.'

He dragged her mouth back to his, leaving small, biting kisses across her bottom lip and drawing a moan from her throat. His tongue slid between her teeth, and her fingers knotted in his damp hair. He painted her skin with the raindrops on his lips. It felt glorious.

She was pulling him backward with her - where, he was not entirely sure but he did not care in the slightest - and then she pushed him down so that he sat on the edge of her bed. He reached out and pulled her into his lap so that she straddled him, and she kissed him once more.

His lips dragged down to her throat, across her neck, pooling around her shoulder and then back again. She felt his fingers tangle in her hair, his teeth graze across her collar bone as her head tipped back in a silent cry of joy.

He was here. Her saukerl was here with her. There was no need to pretend anymore. And she was going to do everything in her power to prove to herself that it was really him, that this wasn't some wonderful, lustful hallucination that haunted her eyes and clung her skin. Her mind was cunning, and could play tricks on her, had done so many times in the past. But she wouldn't let it this time.

He was here. He had to be here.

Sudden panic shuddered through her system and her fingers slid up to grasp his face once again. She held him there, cutting paths across his cheeks with kisses, feeling the heat of his wet skin under hers, hearing the sharp gasp for oxygen catch in his lungs and break from his throat in the hoarse shape of her name.

'Never leave me,' she murmured, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

'Never,' he smiled, dragging her hair over one shoulder and pressing his lips to her bare neck.

She found the buttons of his shirt and fumbled with them, tugging at them impatiently. He grinned and assisted her, helping her slide the shirt off his shoulders. Her fingers immediately slid to where his heartbeat pounded under his ribs, the sound of life pulsing through his veins, and relished it, the knowledge that he was present and overwhelmingly alive before her.

His hand came up and held her cheek, pushing the hair out her eyes with his thumb. Deep molten rust dripped into ice blue, and he smiled, leaning forward and capturing her lips tenderly between his. The tumbling adoration and suffocating relief rose in her throat and flooded her thoughts like mist. She felt his hands slip down to her thighs as he twisted her round, falling back into the matress with him following suit.

His fingers trailed across the thin linen of her nightdress, causing the delicious frost to bite her skin with every brushing sweep of his fingernails. He caught the tender skin of her neck between his teeth and she felt the mark he left burn. Sweet fire. Beautiful pain. It was all coming back to her.

'Never leave me,' she begged, arching her back against him.

'Never never never,' he groaned, grazing his lips from the delicate skin below her ear to the soft bones of her heaving ribcage. His hands knotted in the hem of her nightdress, sliding it up over her head and tossing it aside. Her arms wrapped around his neck, his around her waist, and he pulled her against him, bare chest against bare chest, pounding heartbeat against pounding heartbeat.

He was here. His name was painted across the rough, tender flesh of her lips, sweet like vanilla, bubbling and spilling from her lungs in small gasps. It tasted of rain.

The next few minutes passed in a tumbling, hazy storm of kisses and discarded clothing and skin burning against burning skin. His fingers dragged across her body, forever roaming and caressing and biting and grappling as if he couldn't get enough of her. His mouth painted a path across her skin from her throat to her chest, drawing the small cries from her throat. She felt the sweet, fizzling sparks snap at her insides, each one branding the same word against her ribs: Rudy.

The word of stolen apples and yellow desire and sunshine and victory. He tasted of victory, it dripped from his skin, from the marks he left on her chest. He would always be her victory.

He reached up and pulled her down into the bed so that she lay directly beneath him, and he halted her short, fragmented breaths with his lips, capturing the word on his tongue and moulding it until it resembled something completely different.

The word of a girl he met in Heaven while he played football. A girl painted pink in the sunshine. A girl he finally stole a kiss from in the arms of the river. Such a wonderful word that sounded with each heartbeat.

Liesel.

It was that moment of frozen breath and still lungs as he rested his forehead against hers, their breathing mingling in the air between them. Her fingers wound slowly into his hair, and she brushed her lips across the the tip of his nose, drawing a slow, shuddering breath from the depths of his chest. Rust met ice once again, and he smiled tenderly down at her, leaning down and kissing her softly on her forehead, then trailing down her cheek to her lips, staining them with the remains of rain and stealing the oxygen from her throat.

'Never leave me,' she whispered, holding his face in both hands. He kissed each fingerprint, then her palms.

'Liesel Meminger,' he murmured, pressing his lips to hers once again, 'Never.'

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1944*<strong>

His hand had somehow found its way to hers among the institutional hospital sheets, and had curled around her fingers: those familiar, scratched fingers he adored. He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, the fluttering sweep of her eyelashes across her cheeks, and tried not to imagine a scenario when neither of these were present. That her wonderful heart didn't beat beneath her lungs.

Rudy shook his head and resisted the urge to take her pulse again, like he had about eleven times that hour. His fingers traced the blue ribbon of her vein along her forearm to her wrist, and wondered fleetingly just how much alcohol stung the blood that spread throughout the roots of his Book Thief.

His broken, poisonous best friend.

What was it they said about poison? That you had to suck it out of the blood? Something along those lines. Whether Rudy actually had the capacity of carrying out that kind of action was unknown, and quite frankly, he wasn't going to try. The thought of Liesel's raised eyebrows if she found him trying to suck the alcohol out of her blood was off putting enough. God, that would be weird.

Focus, shitdick, focus. She's here before you. Alive, so wonderfully alive. Hair, lips, eyes, neck, arms, heartbeat. All here.

The last six hours had been a blur. He had awoken in an unfamiliar bed that smelt of cheap soap and pine cones. The view that greeted him through his window was not grey, concrete streets but glorious stretches of green fields with several sheep making a ridiculous amount of noise so early in the morning. The sky was a bowl of clouds, brushing mournfully across the tips of hills. It was beautiful.

It wasn't home.

But even home wasn't home.

Where was home?

Home was long gone.

So what did any of it matter? Where home was and where home wasn't?

But it did matter. It mattered a lot.

She was home.

Home: such an old, dusty word, tucked away on the shelf where no thieving fingers had glanced across it in so long. A word stripped from their chest as brutally as a name dragged from a Jew. At the bloodstained hands of the same pristinely shaven smiles. They had stolen his mother, his older brother, his younger sisters - from one edge of their wonderful, scribbled, colouring-outside-the-lines innocence to the other. Everything picked up in their cold, calculating fingers, weighed up, dismissed with a smart little shrug and discarded. Shattered on the burning ground of dead Himmel and left to rot.

Only a boy and his best friend left among the rubble.

There had been a message sent over miles and miles of telephone wire, though he wasn't too clear on the details, from Ilsa Hermann. A grim look from his father, a shake of the head, the word 'hospital': that's all it took for the boy's world to grind painstakingly, irrevocably to a halt.

And then he was on a train, the unfamiliar scenery speeding away. The blanched, silver pavements sliding into view.

He was coming home.

He looked across to his best friend - the grey crescent moons lacing her eyes, the sickly pale tinge of her skin, the dried blood around her fingernails - and felt the adoration rise from the depths of the fear, if only for a moment. She was so damn beautiful.

She shifted a little in her sleep, her eyes cracking open, revealing a sliver of watery rust brown. She seemed to take in her surroundings, though her expression showed that she could not understand where she was. Several times, her blurred gaze was cast over him, he was sure, but no recognition bloomed there.

Panic shuddered through his system, and he wondered for one childish moment if she had lost her memory. He watched her try to sit up, then groan in pain as her cracked fingers rose up and clutched her forehead. He watched her fall back and let out a wince, her hands knotting in the bed sheets as the stinging remains of the alcohol pulsed through her veins.

He watched her stop. And pause. Her eyes had found him once more. He could make out some form of understanding unfurl in the depths of the metallic glint, and something that cut deeper into the rust, something darker, something disturbing.

Her lips parted. Words were born.

***Liesel's First Words***

**You bastard.**

She launched herself at him before he even registered the fury on her face, before her could understand the sudden strength that grappled her very being and drove her fists towards him. A sharp pain on the side of his forehead split across his eyes as her tight knuckles made contact, sending all his tangible thoughts scattering across the floor as though knocked from him. He fell from his chair, landing on his back on the cool white tiles.

Her rage followed him, and she stumbled from her bed, collapsing on top of him and pummelling every inch of him she could reach. Rudy could only make out the words that tore from her throat in burning screams of fury.

'You bastard! You bastard! You filthy piece of shit!' she shrieked, throwing punches at his stomach, his chest. 'I'll kill you!'

Rudy was paralysed with fear and surprise, having been caught - positively thrown - off guard by this sudden outburst. His body cried out in protest as it was assaulted, begging him to move, to escape. But somewhere, somewhere far, far away in what was left of his frozen mind was the knowledge that he deserved her anger, every last second of it and one hundred times worse. So he stayed. And all could do was lie there, and let Liesel's fiery storm ravage him, like on the day of the parade.

'I'll kill you!

A blow to the side of his head sent him reeling, and finally, his body's primal urge to get away won over. He managed to back himself away from her, sliding across the floor and pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. Liesel dragged herself up and glared across the room at him with enough hatred to make him wince. Her eyes were wide and razor sharp. She looked quite demented.

'You left me.' Her voice was dangerously quiet, soft and murderous. 'You left me.'

'Liesel-' Rudy started, then abruptly stopped. There was nothing - literally nothing - that he could possibly say to make this any better. His next words would either be his saviour or his destruction, and yet, the overwhelming presence of simply nothing fogged up his brain and bluntened all else. He had to say something, anything. Nothing wasn't an option.

'Yes?' she prompted him through gritted teeth.

Shit. What could he say? What could he possibly say? Even if he did say anything of use, it couldn't undo the damage he had done to her. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. There were no words.

'I'm sorry,' he burst out before he could think about it.

Jesus, Mary, he was dead. He was so dead.

'You're sorry?' It was barely above a whisper, a low, hushed sound that cut right through him, like the rustle of leaf carcasses in the October wind. 'You're sorry?' she repeated in disbelief, as if she couldn't quite believe his stupidity, his mind-numbing ignorance.

He nodded his head, wondering briefly if he actually _wanted_ to be murdered by the fearsome creature before him for all the good he was doing. The silence that followed was ice sharp as she looked at him, a new dose of anger rising from the rust.

'You left me,' she hissed, then she flew at him.

He was slammed back against the wall with the force of her, but he managed to catch her wrists, holding them out in front of her. It was all he could do to stop her knuckles making contact with his face as she struggled mercilessly against his desperate grip.

'You're sorry? You're fucking sorry?' she yelled, trying to yank herself away from him, though he held on for dear life. 'You left me! You bastard!'

'I know,' he pleaded with her helplessly, gripping her wrists, 'I'm sorry.'

'You left me to rot like everybody else! There was no one!' He could hear the hurt tremor through her voice like a flurry of rain. 'There's no one left.' Her words hit dangerously close to his bones, sending an involentary shudder through him.

'I know,' his voice shattered midway, fragments of his stoicism falling around his feet.

'They're all dead!' she cried out, then let out a pained moan, 'They're all dead, Rudy.'

A sob burst in her throat as fight slipped out of her, and her breathing crumbled in the air before her. She slumped down and Rudy caught her around the waist before she hit the ground, pulling her to him.

Her fists unclenched, knotting in the collar of his shirt as she rested her forehead against his chest and let all the anger and devastation pour from her. He rested his chin on the top of her head, one arm wrapped around her trembling shoulders, the other stroking her tangled hair as he tried to steady his frantic, panicked heartbeat.

In pure exhaustion, they slid down the wall to the floor, where he sat rocking her as she wept.

'God, they're all dead,' she whispered. 'Mama, Papa. They're all gone.'

Rudy swallowed the tears that rose up from his lungs, but they spilled across her hair anyway, the warm ice of his eyes melting. He buried his face in her shoulder, hugging her close to him, breathing her in. She smelt of home. She was home.

'Rudy,' he felt her voice somewhere against his neck, soft and sad and defeated.

'Yeah?'

'Never leave me,' she said quietly.

He shook his head, hugging her more tightly.

'Never.'

* * *

><p><span><strong>*1948*<strong>

Through the warm, dry darkness, she feels her slumber distort and break. The blindness shifts and twists before her as the flakes of fantasy crumble from her eyes and she adjusts her vision to the thick black. A ribbon of dark grey sky is caught between the eyelids of her bedroom curtains, and she can only just make out a scrape of pearl moon leaking through the clouds.

It takes a while for her to work out what exactly dragged her from her dreams, what pulled the wonderful oblivion from each eyelash. Then she remembers the boy who sleeps beside her, his arms wrapped around her, the source of her warmth. Her head rests on his bare chest, tucked into his neck, just above where his heartbeat pulses softly. It's speeding up now, growing louder.

She feels him shift restlessly, his fingers tensing and gripping her skin, his fingernails digging in like teeth. The pain is sharp and incessant, but she bears it because she knows he needs something to hold onto.

She looks up at his face, and finds it tear-stained and glinting in the moonlight. His cheeks are fragmented by silvery streams that cut from his eyes to his neck.

The oxygen catches in his throat and he awakes with a start, sitting up in confusion and panic. His hands fly out and catch her wrist, and she finds herself face to face with him, his eyes wide and grieving, his lips parted in fear. The tears spill from his eyes, and his trembling fingers slowly ease away from her arm as realisation hits him.

'I'm sorry,' he mumbles, running a hand distractedly through his hair.

She shakes her head and takes his face in both hands, pressing her lips to the racetracks on his cheeks. 'Don't be,' she replies simply.

He lets her head fall into her shoulder, where she wraps her arms around his neck and rocks him gently.

'What was it?' she asks quietly. She doesn't expect an answer. He gives one anyway.

'My mother.' His voice crumbles against her skin, soft and heartbroken. 'I watched them put a gun to her head and pull the trigger.' Her throat grew damp with his weeping. 'And then they were all there, my brother and sisters, in unmarked graves on Himmel Street,' she felt a long, shuddering sigh release against her neck. 'It was just me left.'

Her lips found his forehead, and lingered there. 'It will never be just you, you know.'

He pulled away and looked at her, his arms wrapping around her waist and unlikely to ever loosen. His eyes were raw, blue ice, open and childish and afraid. She could only see herself in them.

'Never leave me,' he pleaded.

She smiled through the dark, pulling his lips to hers and kissing him long and tender.

'Never.'

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Damn, that took a long time. And it was so friggin difficult. Holy crap. Again, very, very sorry. Please leave a review because a lot of work went into this chapter and it really makes my day. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed finally bloody finishing it.****  
><strong>

**To theevilsquiddancer, free imaginary cookies because whovians are awesome.**


	12. Monsters

**A/N: Hey guys. I wanted to do a children/parent bonding chapter, partly because Bee suggested it (thank you for your input, much appreciated :D) and partly because I was inspired by one of the newer Doctor Who episodes 'Listen'. And if that isn't a reason to write, I don't know what is.**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

><p><strong>*In A Small House On The Outskirts Of Munich*<strong>

**Two children are in their beds.**

**One is sleeping.**

**One is screaming.**

It had almost become a routine. A perfectly rehearsed, strategically set out routine.

It was branded in her skin, stamped across her chest as if she were an instruction manual. Lest she forget.

Lest she forget, bullshit. She could never forget even if she tried.

She knew his voice like the back of her hand; it was intricately etched into the flesh of her heartbeat, deep and fragile and aching. It was always present, stretching somewhere at the corner of her mind like a spider web. She knew it so well that her senses had evolved to pick it out of the mists of her subconscious. So that even in the deepest slumber, her son's cries could always crack through the wall of fantasy.

Though rarely caught showing cowardice - or cowardice in his childish, unworldly eyes - Hans had reached the age in which he became self aware, and therefore aware of his surroundings. Generally, this doesn't affect much. That is, until it gets to bedtime. And with such a wildly vivid imagination (kudos to Liesel's book collection) sometimes it can play games, not always with the sweetest intentions.

Hence, fear. Hence, nightmares.

It would inevitably begin with the warm blindness that painted the inside of her eyelids, the thick, heavy oblivion burying her. And then it was Hans' screams would tear through the silence, shattering the inky blue sky like glass. They would weave through the house and rip though the walls. It would drag sleep from Liesel's eyes, pulling her with cold, wire puppet strings from her bed, and her feet would automatically begin the slow, surreal trek to her son's bedroom.

Dark clouds would loom up around her feet like thick fog. Her vision would shift and distort as the dream she had just escaped clung on to her, sticking to her bones and her eyelids like cement. Sometimes, she was still caught in the dream, the hazy oddities with funny little moustaches following her through the hallway. The darkness would shift silently, and her thoughts would always be brought back to the same story.

Everyone dreams. Everyone.

But what does Liesel's son dream about?

What else but creeping shadows caped in nighttime? What else but the skeletons of trees stalking across the carpet? What else but the monsters under the bed?

She pushes the door open into the small box room with paper birds strung across the ceiling, its distorted shadow like barbed wire. Her dazed eyes would fall to the small curled up form of her boy, clothed in fear and buried beneath his blanket. His whimpers slip through the air, stirring the shadows like stew. It's such a small, sad sound, and her heart would always constrict with the worn yet powerful ache of maternal love.

'Hans,' she would whisper, crouching down beside his bed and stroking his soft, almost-lemon hair.

'Mama?' would come his weak reply through the warm black oblivion.

'_Ja, mein liebling_,' she soothed.

He turned over to face her, his wide rusty eyes glinting in the dark. 'Are they gone?'

'Yes. No monsters here.'

'Promise?' he said.

'Promise.'

She'd lay down beside him on his small cot and drape her arms across his small, trembling form, like she has so many times before, until he stopped trembling, and his breathing slowed. Knowing that his mother was there armed with an invisible sword, he would sleep. Then she'd watch the dawn creep in, the tree carcasses fade from the floor, the pink devour the black, and she'd make her escape back to her bedroom, where she would curl up next to Rudy for a few more stolen hours of peace.

It was standard procedure. Not the easiest of tasks, but simple enough. Most of the time.

Tonight wasn't one of those nights.

Hans' cries had woken Alys, and she too was wailing. Liesel groaned as the blindfold was ripped from the tips of her eyelashes and sat up, rubbing her eyes with her palms. Rudy stirred beside her and pushed himself up onto his elbows, his eyes glued shut.

'You get the girl, I'll get the boy,' she murmured to him, and he nodded mutely, still beyond the capability of speech, and rolled onto the floor. After stifling a laugh, she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled out into the hallway. She heard Rudy trudging along beside her, having seemingly managed to get up.

The door opened to the familiar little room and she turned the light on. Hans was in his pyjamas stood by his sister's cot, trying to hush her her loud, defiant cries. His eyes flicked up to the door agitatedly to see his parents stood by the door: his father dozing off against the frame and his mother elbowing him in the stomach. Relief momentarily flooded his bright face before being rapidly clouded by guilt, the expression he had when he had been caught stealing a book from Liesel's bookcase.

Rudy half walked, half fell into the room and lifted up the infant, rocking her gently. 'Come on, little saumensch, shut up,' he murmured, kissing his daughter's forehead as her crying died down a little.

'He's all yours,' he muttered to Liesel as he wandered out into the hallway, cradling the little girl in his arms, Alys' irritable chirps resounding in the darkness.

Liesel turned back to Hans, still stood gripping the cot, his eyes wide and metallic. She knelt down beside him, and took his small cold hand in her own.

'Do you want to go back to sleep?' she asked.

He shook his head vigorously. 'Nein.'

Liesel sighed, placed her hands under his arms and lifted him up. Having nearly reached the age of five, this was getting increasingly difficult to do, but she rested him on her hip regardless, his short legs dangling down. She smiled at him but the familiar smirk did not loom up from the corners of his mouth.

'What was it this time?' she said.

'Monsters,' he replied.

'Again? What did the ugly swines want this time?'

She could see the rust creeping into his eyes, the curling, delicately sharp edge that blunted her own haunted eyes. The same molten copper pools that she found in the mirror, but younger, more hopeful, more innocent. Without the grief.

'You and Papa,' he admitted, his small fingers unconsciously tightening around her neck.

***A Small Fact of Life***

**Everyone dreams.**

**Everyone.**

**But what does Liesel's son dream about?**

**What else but the same thing Liesel herself has nightmares about?**

Liesel's words were stuck to her tongue, clinging to her throat like dust. The acute rememberance of her own subconscious burned at the centre of her thoughts. But she shook her head, shedding the creatures that gripped at her shoulders, claws bared, swastikas glaring in the dark.

She set Hans down on his bedspread and sat beside him. 'What happened?'

'They were in the house,' he said, distress blooming in his eyes. 'They were in the house and I didn't have anything to fight with. And you and Papa weren't there. I didn't know where you were.'

His gaze flitted to her face, a touch of calculation on his face as if he were making sure that it was definitely her. Supposedly satisfied that she was in fact his mother, he continued.

'And they broke through the front door, and I could hear you screaming. And I couldn't find you anywhere, but you kept screaming. I got downstairs, and they had you and Papa in the living room, and you were dead.'

'What about Alys?' she asked.

Hans shrugged. 'Why would they want her? She stinks.'

Despite herself, she bit down on a laugh. 'I suppose.'

He looked at her, solemn eyes wide. 'Mama, you were bleeding paper.'

Liesel wrapped an arm round his small shoulders and kissed his forehead. 'It's just a dream.'

'I hate dreams,' he spat savagely. 'I hate them.'

***An Observation***

**'I hate dreams.'**

**The same words that fell from Rudy's lips**

**Years and years ago.**

Liesel looked down at her son, the shining racetracks cutting down his cheeks, and remembered seeing the same haunted expression in her husband's eyes as he snapped awake from another nightmare.

She could remember his laboured breathing spilling out of his trembling body, the drumming of his heartbeat as she pulled him into her neck and rocked him gently. He clung to her, and she knew another body had been found; the question was who? Mother, brother, sister, all piled up like rags under a fiery sky, a soft sweet apocalypse.

_I hate dreams_, he had murmured into her shoulder, the tears pressing into her skin. And she had laid kisses in his lemon hair and across his forehead until he drifted off again. _If_ he drifted off again.

Liesel looked back at her son, hunched over bitterly, the same face only smaller with her eyes.

'Do you want to hear a secret?' she said to him, and he nodded eagerly, eyes widened a little in wonder. 'I hate dreams too.'

'You do?' he asked incredulously.

'Yes.'

'But why?'

In retrospect, she probably should have foreseen this. Not only was it in Hans' nature to question, it was his nature to interrogate until given answers. Of course he wanted to know why. But was she prepared to tell him? Would she ever be prepared to tell him?

No, she wouldn't. She could barely face it herself.

The door opened and Rudy walked in, still cradling Alys, who seemed to watch her father's face with curious fascination. He smiled affectionately down at her.

'For someone that never shuts up, she's pretty damn beautiful,' he murmured, sitting down cross legged at the end of Hans' bed. Casting a small disdainful glance at his sister - something he always found the time to do - Hans turned to face Rudy, his brown eyes wide and rusting with questions.

'Papa, do you hate dreams?'

Rudy's eyes flicked up to meet Liesel's and they looked at each other, the same question stuck to their lips and corroding their teeth. It didn't need saying.

'Sometimes,' Rudy said slowly. Liesel caught a glimpse of his arms tensing a little around his daughter, making her squeak irritably. He quickly loosened his grip, rocking her agologetically.

'What do you dream about?' Hans asked.

The rust of his eyes was sharp and hard to avoid, like being caught in a trap of metallic wire. There was no doubt that he would grow to be as quick and perceptive as his mother, something that had never worked to Rudy's advantage.

'Mama, Papa,' Hans said quietly. 'What do you dream about?'

Liesel let out a long sigh of defeat and fixed her son with a steady gaze. 'We dream about monsters too.'

Hans turned his curious gaze to scrutinise his father's face, as if trying to work out if this was in fact true. Rudy smiled despite himself. 'Very scary monsters,' he said with a grin.

Hans' expression grew hungry, ravenous: the expression of rapture that burst in his eyes whenever he opened a new book and devoured the words within it. The craving for a story.

'Tell me about them,' he ordered, settling back against the wall and looking eagerly from one parent to the other.

Liesel looked at Rudy and smiled sadly. 'Do you think it's time?'

'Yeah,' he said softly. 'It's time.'

A dose of oxygen was drawn into her throat as she soothed the frosty dread rising in her. She breathed. Then she began.

***How She Began***

**How all good stories begin.**

**Once upon a time,**

**On a street named Heaven.**

'There once was a girl,' she said slowly. 'Her name was the Book Thief.'

'Book Thief,' Hans repeated with a frown, weighing the words on his tongue. He had heard them before. Their meaning was hidden somewhere in his mind.

'The Book Thief travelled far, far away from home,' she continued, 'through earth and snow, to a place called Himmel. It was a wonderful, wonderful place. It was there that she met a woman with a big heart inside her wardrobe chest and a man with eyes made of silver.' Her eyes flit around the room then her voice lowered to an excited hum, 'You want to hear something amazing?'

Hans nodded eagerly, his small fingers twisting in the duvet.

She leaned in close and whispered, 'He had an accordion for a heart.'

'An accordion?' Hans repeated in disbelief. 'But how did he live?'

Liesel let a golden smile grow on her lips. 'Music and words,' she murmured, 'He breathed them. Every day, just music and words.' Her eyes fluttered closed a moment in rememberance, 'He taught the girl to read and to write. He taught her how to love the words and make them her's. He planted them in her heart and her lungs and watched them grow around her ribs, her limbs, and from her mouth.' With difficulty, she managed to shove down the next sentence that threatened to rise from her throat.

_He saved me. The man with an accordion heart._

'And then,' her eyes flew open and she faced her son with a grin, 'the Book Thief met a boy. He went by the name of Jesse Owens, and he was very, very fast. And his hair!' She shook her head in awe. 'It was the brightest shade of yellow you'd ever seen. Hair the colour of lemons!'

Alys chose this particular moment to let out an indignant chirp, Rudy seemingly having paused while rocking her. 'Sorry Alys,' he mumbled, trying to keep the smile caught behind his teeth.

'They were best friends, the Book Thief and Jesse Owens,' Liesel continued. 'They went on all kinds of adventures.'

'Like what?' Hans prompted her, sharp eyes wide.

'Oh Hans, she wasn't called the Book Thief for nothing,' she laughed. 'Every now and then, they would go to a big house at the edge of town and steal.'

'Steal?' There was an edge of mirth stinging his voice like delicious venom. His expression was frozen in such a likeness of Rudy that she had to resist the urge to catch a glimpse of the original. 'What did they steal?'

She shrugged. 'Books. Stories. Words.'

'Words,' he said quietly, relishing the sound, and the soft, dry taste it left in his mouth.

'But Jesse Owens kept asking the Book Thief for a kiss. And no matter how many times she said no, he kept asking and asking and asking.'

'And what happened?' Hans asked.

'Yes, what did happen?' Rudy piped up innocently. Liesel rolled her eyes.

'Well Jesse Owens was so _desperate _fora kiss-' Rudy shot her a glare '-that he jumped into ice and snow to save her words. He was stupid like that, but he was also the bravest boy she knew. And finally, he got his kiss.'

'Damn right he did,' Rudy muttered under his breath, hastily coughing when he caught his wife's eye.

'It was a perfect world they lived in, full of races and apples and summer.' A pause drew from her lungs, long and soft and silent. 'But there were monsters in that world too.'

It blossomed in the forefront of her mind, a droplet of thick black ink in water, twisting and billowing like a puff of cigarette smoke. The real life monsters that hid in the shadows of her dreams, ready to bite, ready to steal. The monsters that ruled the smiling sky on the day of the paper parade and named people after numbers. The antagonist in the storybook.

She could remember them well. And though they lay defeated at her feet, they were still present, somewhere in her thoughts. They always would be.

'These monsters were like no other. They controlled their lives from the background, like puppets. They did not shoot themselves, but gave young boys the guns to shoot and told them it was for the greater good.' The last words were spat out with such savagery that she had to bite her lip to stop the curses from spilling like blood. Her head shook a little and she mumbled, 'The greater good, they said.'

Hans sat silently, watching his mother with rust-soaked eyes. He looked older, less like the innocent boy of five, more like the girl of nine who had clutched a handbook for gravediggers in her thin arms.

'They took the man with an accordion heart from the girl, and they took the boy's father too, and made them fight in a pointless war. They forced them to shoot. To kill. Hundreds left without humanity. Thousands left dead.' A breath she didn't realise she had been holding in shuddered from her throat. 'There was no music left in the man after they had finished with him.'

'Liesel,' Rudy said quietly. 'Are you sure you want to keep going?'

'We started it, we'll finish it,' she replied simply. He held her gaze for a pained moment, then he looked away, his arms tightening around his daughter.

'But they didn't just steal humanity,' she said flatly. 'They stole names too. From those they considered beneath them. Stamped them with a cold, black number,' a sharp exhale of bitterness was spat from her lips. 'Marched them through the street like a circus. An innocent man with feathery hair forced through a crowd of monsters like an animal.'

Alys had fallen asleep in Rudy's arms, and he clutched her close to his chest. The warm ice of his eyes was dripping.

'And no matter how much the girl and the boy stole from them, they would always steal something back,' Liesel's voice was crumbling in the air before her, 'Each time at a higher cost.'

The air was crisp with silence, thick with it. It suffocated. Hans did not blink. His gaze did not waver. He simply watched, as the woman became girl before him.

'And then, one night, they stole everything,' she whispered. 'Everything. The man with the accordion heart. The woman with a wardrobe chest. Jesse Owens' entire family, his brother, his sisters, his mother. All sleeping in the snow,' her gaze fell to the brush of thick black sliding through the curtains. 'They wouldn't wake up.'

The salt burned her eyes, leaking across her cheeks. Her lips were stained with it; she could taste the tears in her throat. Her fingers unconsciously reached out and caught Rudy's and he pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.

The rest of the words died on her lips, sticking to the back of her throat. It was time to end it. The story had dissolved to dust before her, the ashes staining her hands. How was it that she always ended up holding the remains of her life between her fingers? How?

Because they kept coming back.

Her antagonist. Her villain in the storybook. Her monsters.

***How She Wished She Could End It***

**How all good stories end.**

**And they all lived happily ever after.**

**With lies.**

'But what happened to the Book Thief and Jesse Owens?' Hans piped up, breaking through the fragile silence.

'What?'

'What happened to the Book Thief and Jesse Owens?' he repeated.

Liesel looked up at her son in mild surprise, as he sat waiting for her to finish. His eyes stung with innocence, so much so that it hurt to look. Deep watery brown, like the earth, with so much hope blossoming up from the mud like flowers. Uncorrupted: she couldn't remember a time when she had seen anything so free of the bitter corrosion born from war. Avid curiosity dripped from his voice, thick and sweet and tasting of syrup.

To her, he was not asking. He was handing her the words. He was giving her the happy ending she craved. Because she was alive. And her best friend too. They had lived and continued to live, even after their home had become ash.

Through the parades and the bombs and the snow, no matter how small, no matter how slight, there was a happy ending.

Slowly, Liesel cleared her thoat, and continued. 'The Book Thief and Jesse Owens grew up. They grew up and they moved on with their lives,' she said softly, 'It was hard, but they kept going. They got married. They had two children. One of them, she named after the accordion hearted man.' She stroked his lemon hair; it felt like feathers against her fingers.

Hans smiled. Not his usual, confident, Rudy smirk. His rare, golden, wonderful, Book Thief grin. 'And?' he prompted her.

Rust met rust: pools of molten copper reflected in her own. The eyes of a storyteller.

She shook her head in glorious defeat. 'And they all lived happily ever after.'

***An Ill-Timed Observation***

**Lies or truth,**

**Everyone loves a happy ending.**

'The end,' he said with satisfaction. 'Nice story Mama.'

'Yeah, it was beautiful,' Rudy murmured. He stood up and gently placed the sleeping girl down in her cot. 'You got this one to sleep at any rate.'

'One down, one to go,' she grinned.

'As always.' He reached across and stroked his son's hair. 'Goodnight, little saukerl.

'Goodnight, Papa.'

Rudy smiled and left the room, the thick, black oblivion beyond the doorway swallowing him up like water. Liesel turned to her son. 'Okay, time to sleep now.'

Hans giggled and settled down beneath the duvet. 'No more monsters?'

'None,' Liesel confirmed.

'Promise?'

Promise,' she smiled, pressing a kiss to his smooth forehead. 'And if there are, we'll send Papa after them.' She checked herself. 'If he's still awake.'

_'Gute nacht, Mama.'_

'_Gute nacht, mein liebling.'_

***In A Small House On The Outskirts Of Molching***

**Two children are in their beds.**

**One is sleeping.**

**One is dreaming.**

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><p><strong>AN: So I know this chapter was pretty short (by my standards) and dialogue driven (by my standards) and not very Liesel-Rudyish (by my etc. etc.) but I hope you enjoyed anyway, because I really loved writing this - at least, when I wasn't forced to rewrite half of it because the website glitched.**

**Please review, as always, because it makes all this worthwhile for me and I'll see you guys in the next chapter!**

**Supermegafoxyawesomehot Totoro out.**


	13. Flail

**A/N: Hey guys. This chapter is another pre-Victory one, because people have requested it and I really enjoyed writing the last one. Thanks for reading, you guys are just so wonderful (feeling pretty sentimental right now, excuse the gushing).**

**I'm sorry this chapter is so late, but Mockingjay Part 1 happened, then a helluva lot of French coursework happened, then the first three seasons of Walking Dead happened, and I'm still recovering, so bear with me.**

**Enjoy, because I know I will.**

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><p><strong>*Words Spoken On A Ice Bitten Day*<strong>

**'You're afraid of him, aren't you?'**

The words were swallowed by the frozen air, melting on winter's frosty tongue, but Rudy heard them anyway. How could he not hear them? They come from her.

Liesel stood in her winter coat, her arms folded across a book - The Whistler, as far as he could tell - clutched to her chest, the cold stinging her skin and painting it that soft shade of colour he refuses to think about. Shivering. He watched the rust curl at the edges of her dark eyes, the same sight that has greeted his hungry gaze multiple times in the past when she is buried in reflection, submerged in a deep pool of thought. He loves it when they do that.

It was difficult to work out what occured in Liesel Meminger's head, something that Rudy had found increasingly frustrating as the adoration gradually began to bite. Only the snow and the trees and the boy with yellow hair were reflected in them, painted across the glassy surface of metallic brown. It had never been easy to try an discern whatever occurred beneath, and whether she was this unreadable intentionally or not was as unclear as the thoughts that hid behind the rust.

He didn't know anyone else who would utter those vile words that rip his pride to pieces in mere seconds so unashamedly. So tenderly. He didn't know why she uttered them in the first place. But he does know that in moments, he is in pieces before her, under her calculating, analytical scrutiny. The boy always is, and it never ceases to simultaneously amaze and aggravate the shit out of him. She is strange. She is far too perceptive for his own good. Oh, but she's wonderful too.

And so when the words leave her lips, it's not entirely surprising that he hears every articulately, deliberately pronounced word from her, and eats them up like gold, despite the putrid taste of the meaning behind them.

He spits into the snow in disgust and turns away from her.

'Is that a yes?' she asks, clearly unperturbed by his annoyance.

'No,' he scoffs. 'Why would I be afraid of Franz Deutscher?'

'Well, maybe the fact that as soon as you saw him, you dragged me off in the other direction.'

***An Unnecessary Observation***

**The girl had a valid point.**

With skipping Hitler Youth, teenage rebellion and just general determined idiocy, Franz Deutscher had become less of an irritation, more of an outright enemy. Rudy knew this, and he would be very surprised if Liesel hadn't also worked this out.

Being Rudy Steiner was not an easy task these days. Though his list of antagonists remained relatively small compared to, say, the Nazi Party, having two large idiots thirsting for his blood and - worse still - his honour wasn't ideal. It was only a matter of time until Victor Chemmel carved his name on Rudy's rotting dignity (he as good as foretold his revenge on him) and Franz Deutscher had already managed to hack away at what was left. It was an encounter he really didn't want to repeat - the skin around his eye was still tender and a little grey.

And so it was that as Rudy and Liesel walked home from school that snow-fed day and Franz Deutscher slid into view, he had caught her arm and pulled her the opposite way, towards the river, where there was ensured safety. What he probably should have foreseen was the interrogation that would no doubt come next.

'Are you going to argue your point or what?' Liesel's weary voice dragged him out of his thoughts and he scowled at her.

'Nothing to argue about,' he muttered, prodding clumps of snow with his shoe.

'Obviously.'

'There's not!' The words snapped from his teeth like bones.

'So can we go home now?' she asked.

'No.'

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, letting out a sigh. Rudy kept his eyes stuck to the ground, though he knew she was gazing at him with that look she got sometimes. That soft, pitying look that made her metallic eyes melt. He couldn't bring himself to look at her when she was like this. She was too beautiful. Too cold. She looked at him as if he were an unruly child craving her attention - and maybe he was. It was the look that made him want to kiss her. To steal the pity and the frost from her mouth, to prove his worth, to prove that he wasn't so completely, utterly insignificant. And because of that, it was the look that made him hate her.

Despite the fact he couldn't have possibly hated her, whatever she said or did.

'Leave if you want,' he waved his hand at her dismissively. 'I'm not keeping you here.'

'You didn't answer my question,' she said levelly.

'Yes I did.'

'Not _well_.'

'What are you trying to say?' He rounded on her. 'Do you think I'm a coward? Is that what you want to hear?'

'No,' she said, impatience dripping to the ground like acid. 'That's nowhere near.'

'Crucified Christ, Liesel!' He spat again into the frozen earth. 'What do you want then?'

'I want you to stop acting like some wounded animal!' Her voice rose to a stubborn yell, meeting his anger midair. 'What do I care if you're afraid of him? Hell, I would be too if it were me!'

'You don't get it,' he muttered.

'Oh yeah? Try me.' Her dangerous eyes were sharp.

'You're a g-'

'I swear, if you finish that sentence, I'll be in line with Deutcher and Chemmel,' she spat through gritted teeth.

His mouth snapped shut, and he shook his head. 'Sorry,' he mumbled.

'And?' she prompted him.

He sighed, violently shoving down a stray smile that threatened to rise. 'And you're twice the worth of any boy I know,' he admitted to the snow.

'Better.'

Rudy brought his eyes up from the ground to find her stood right in front of him, closer than was considered comfortable, and he fought the urge to take a step back from her. Her book was no longer in her arms, but carefully placed in the roots of a tree, deliberately far from the corrosive tide of feathery snow.

Her eyes were dark and heavy with something he couldn't quite place, deep and beautiful and sharp. And very close. Why did she have to be so damn wonderful? He felt his lips ache for her's like they had so many times in the past, burn for the rough tender flesh that stood so readily, so near to him. He felt the cold swallow his anger, soothe it away with the distant sound of the frosty December river, as his eyes filled with her.

'Don't act like some pathetic bastard, because you're not.' Her voice had grown soft and cold, steaming up the air between them like glass. 'There's no shame in being afraid. All the greatest people are at some point in their lives.'

'Even you?' he managed to choke out, assuming that he was attempting a joke of some sort, and wondering why he was so susceptible to her.

Her eyes grew still for a moment, her pupils blossoming and swallowing the rust, filling her with nothing, and once again, he wished he knew what unfurled beneath.

***The Thoughts Of Liesel Meminger***

**Caught halfway between a dream and reality**

**The light deflating in his brown eyes**

**As the oxygen freezes in his heart**

**And stills his lungs.**

**But the train kept moving regardless**

**Leaving him in the snow by the tracks.**

A small, bitter smile chewed at the corner of her mouth. 'Even me.' A pause was drawn from between her teeth, then she shook her head, shedding the thoughts that haunted her. 'Whether you're a coward or not, life is shit. We're poor, we're hungry. Makes no difference.'

'You're certainly optimistic,' he said.

'Oh I have to be,' she muttered darkly.

He looked at her, watching as her expression softened into frosty sombreness, her sharp eyes growing blunt and heavy as they gazed at something he couldn't see. It may not have been clear what had dragged the fight from her, but he didn't care. He wanted to touch her cold cheek, let his fingers creep into her hair, press his lips to her forehead and bring the warmth back to her skin. But he didn't. Instead, he did the only other thing he could possibly think of.

From edge to edge of Liesel's vision was suddenly filled with movement, a blur of dark winter coat and lemon yellow. She snapped out of her reverie to find Rudy...doing something that she wasn't quite clear on. He jumped about, stomping footprints into the snow, throwing his arms above his head and spinning in wild circles. She would have been tempted to laugh if she wasn't so baffled by this bizarre turn of events.

'Rudy?'

'Yeah?'

'What in God's name are you doing?'

He halted for a moment and looked at her, his face solemn. 'I'm doing what you said.'

'Which is?' she prompted him in confusion.

'I'm not sulking,' he stated, as if it were obvious, then continued throwing himself in various contortions.

'Okay, I understand that. But what is-' she flapped a vague hand in his direction, '-_this _exactly?'

'Dancing.'

There was a pause in which she absorbed this information. 'Dancing,' she repeated slowly.

'Yes,' he said, 'Keep up, Liesel.'

Her mouth opened, then closed. It was one of those incredibly rare moments when the Book Thief was well and truly lost for words. And quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned, it was one of the best.

'Rudy, have you ever danced in your life?'

'Nope.'

'Well I guess that explains it.'

'Excuse me?' He turned to face her in mock indignation. 'Are you telling me that you don't find my dance skills exceptional?'

'Do you even know the meaning of the word?'

'Christ Liesel, not everyone lives off books like you,' he said, kicking a spray of snow at the trees, and spinning around.

She shook her head impatiently. 'Rudy, seriously. Why are you dancing?' She paused in thought. 'Or whatever the hell you're doing.'

'You said it yourself, saumensch. Life is shit,' he replied simply. 'And when life is shit, you dance.'

'Who told you that?' she asked, eyebrows raised.

'I dunno. Made it up,' he shrugged. Then a grin slowly spread across his face, 'Want to dance with me?'

'Are you kidding me?' Liesel laughed. 'It's bad enough _one_ of us is doing this, let alone two.'

'Oh please,' he waved of her words with a careless flick of his limbs. 'I know you want to dance with me.'

'Looks more like flailing to me,' she remarked.

'Alright, fine. Want to _flail_ with me?'

Her eyebrows shot up. 'Excuse me?'

Rudy paused in thought. 'That came out far more sexual than I intended it.'

'_Intended _it?' she repeated incredulously.

Rudy stopped moving for exactly six seconds, long enough to throw the girl a wink and a smug grin. 'If only you knew, Book Thief.'

'You're ridiculous,' she informed him, 'And if you don't mind, I'm freezing, so I'm going to go.'

Liesel knelt down to retrieve the mound of paper, now icy and crisp to touch, from the grip of rough bark. She straightened up and turned to find Rudy stood right in front of her. Her frozen breath hitched in her lungs, causing them to ache with the sudden intake of icy air.

'Holy shit Rudy, you scared me,' she choked out, trying to even out the sudden waver in her heartbeat. And the burn in her lips.

He didn't reply, but just looked down at her, his eyes soft. She found herself staring at them, trying to work out why they were so unforgivingly blue. They reminded her of the rich, euphoric strokes of the summer sky, the constant sound of running water from grassy days by the river. But they were lighter, less acidic, less concentrated. Just blue. Just wide, childish blue.

And she loved them.

He reached out and pulled the rectanglar mound from her numb fingers, placing down in its original spot, before turning back to her. She felt the protests rise up in her throat then wither like flowers in the snow as he came closer again. So damn close. His glass breath curling in the air before her. After that yellow day with the rope swing, she was waking up each morning to the sound of the football's loud, thumping heartbeat against the wall outside, and wondering if it would be the day he finally broke her. That she'd finally give in.

Oh Liesel, if only you knew.

It was only a few seconds. Another wild idea of his blossoming at the centre of the ice blue sky. There was only enough time to register the grin that illuminated his face, the sudden warmth of his hands trapping her's, before she was dragged out with him, away from logic. Away from words. Into stupidity. Into recklessness. Into everything that was Rudy Steiner.

The world smudged into a white blur around her, a monochrome pinstripe pattern painting her eyes. Trees. Snow. Trees. Snow. River. Snow. She was spinning, her eyes hazy. She could hear Rudy laughing as he spun her round, her own laughter ringing out against the frozen air in spirals of steam bursting from her lips.

His hands let go, and he's dancing again: those strange, ridiculous, almost-dancing-but-not-quite movements, and for some reason - some God-forsaken reason - she's joining in, throwing herself around and laughing. Dancing with him. Or flailing. Or whatever the hell was going on.

***Somewhere near the Amper River***

**Two youths prove they are not cowards.**

'Screw life,' he yelled, tipping his head back in abandon as he swung around and around. 'Screw it!'

'Screw this shit!' she cried out, throwing her arms up in the air and kicking snow at the trees.

'I'm not scared!' he bellowed to the sky. 'You hear me Deutscher? Chemmel? I'm not fucking scared!'

A long, estatic cry released from her lungs, shattering the ice air, and mingling with Rudy's breathless laugh. The frost sharp oxygen dragged through her chest, carving her ribs with a rattling ache, but she would not stop moving, though she could no longer exactly confine what she was doing to words.

She felt him catch her hands a second time and spin her round until her thoughts swirled dangerously across the white that stained her eyes. Her head shifted and distorted painfully, the cold constricting her lungs, but the rest of her was burning with heat like a furnace. It was dizzying: her head felt so light that it could have just floated away. But she was anchored to the ground by the tips of her fingers, held down by her best friend.

It barely registered when they began to slow down, their feet stumbling and their breathing shallow and heavy. The pale grey sky swung to wild heights above her, the ground shifting beneath her feet, and her knees were giving way, but she barely noticed. Nor did she notice when an arm slid around her waist, pulling her closer, and her hand was caught by another.

***Something Very Few People Knew***

**Thanks to several hours of forced babysitting**

**And a number of younger sisters,**

**Rudy Steiner actually knew more about dancing than he'd care to admit.**

The world began to slow around her, the sharp ache in her dazed skull softening. She felt her head fall against his shoulder in exhaustion, trying to blindfold herself from the mercilessly spinning landscape. Her fingers unconsciously clenched and unclenched in his, trying to work out if they were still in fact there. She wondered briefly why her heartbeat had suddenly skyrocketed beneath her ribcage.

And why the world was still revolving.

It took a little while to work it out. That it was not the snow and the trees that turned around like a music box. It was her. Or more specifically, _them_.

He held her close. Utterly, impossibly close. Close enough that she could almost ignore the biting winter cold corroding her skin, almost lose herself in the muffled warmth trapped between them. Almost. But her mind was finally spluttering to life again like a rusty motor engine, her thoughts being collected from the ground where they had been scattered, and speeding up. One arm around her waist. The other hand holding her's somewhat out to the side as he manoeuvred them in a slow, loose circle. Was this normal? She honestly didn't know.

Her head lifted from his shoulder and she looked up at him, questions painting her features. He simply looked back at her as if silently daring her to move away, to challenge this new development. To steal this dream, this wish from his ice-bitten fingers. He looked at her eyes: the dark, unreadable earth brown with a hint of a metallic sheen, razor sharp when angered, soft and melting when in thought. So goddamn beautiful. He looked at her lips: cracked and rough yet sweet, that dusty shade of pink that he adored, that he was forbidden from. They were parted in confusion. He wanted to touch them, run his thumb along them, every pattern, ridge and crevice that rose and fell in rhythm with her lungs.

And he waited for her response. Waited for the ice sharp words that she would no doubt impale him with, a soft shake of the head, something. Though it would burn him in ways he didn't know ice could, he half wished for her to push away, because he knew when had her this close - this wonderfully, horribly close - there was no chance that he would be the first to let go.

His name was caught between her teeth, a shake of the head biting the back of her neck, a refusal growing in her throat. But she swallowed them; defeat reaching through her veins. She let her hand slide up to rest on his shoulder, in what she assumed was the proper position - not that she was necessarily very skilled in this area - and started to move her feet somewhat in reflection of what he was doing.

His eyes widened in surprise and he looked at her, trying to figure out if this was in fact permission or she was distancing herself from him. A small sigh of amusement escaped her lips, and she nodded, the ghost of a smile aching at the edges.

It rose like a tide: engulfing and suffocating any distinguishable thought he had. Past adoration, past childish affection - it was new, terrifying, uplifting, dizzying. He didn't know what it was, nor why he suddenly drowned in it, filling his lungs, stealing the oxygen. But he knew it was causing that acutely painful, vibrantly colourful burst in his chest that made him pull her closer, hold her tighter, because she was just so damn wonderful.

And he had never wanted to kiss her more.

His eyes fell to her lips once again, now a little pale and cracked in the frozen air. He wondered what they'd taste of. He wondered if he cared. He probably didn't. Not if he could just touch her cold skin, let his fingers tangle in her mess of almost German hair, press his mouth against her mouth, take her bottom lip between his, bite down- shit. He forcefully dragged his defiantly struggling gaze back up to her eyes, and swallowed a small gasp that threatened to escape.

They were soft. Softer than he'd ever seen them. Thick, molten, glorious earthy brown. If he had been fluent in words like Liesel was, he would have written some crappy poem about them, despite the fact she would have slapped him and told him to grow a pair. She looked at him in that way he had only seen in small snatches. The look he was never quite sure if it was real or not, because though he wasn't really one for a wild imagination, Liesel managed to maintain and control a whole section of his mind where she was free to do as she pleased - something that had always worked to Rudy's benefit.

It was tender: sweet and pure and utterly beautiful. Her lips were parted just a little, as if caught in the small, dusty space between silence and speech. As if there was a word balancing on the edge of her tongue, ready to flit away like a bird. Oh, how much he wanted to draw the word from her throat, taste it. Her eyes were wide, achingly so, observing him with something he couldn't quite place. Something that made his insides do strange things.

But there was something else, unwillingly - possibly unknowingly - close to the surface. Blossoming up from the rust. He knew what it was: he had seen it several times before. Fear. A cold wariness that edged her eyes, and made them sting. The look of a wild rabbit caught in the sight of a predator. What made the frost weave and constrict around his ribs was that maybe she considered him the predator. It hurt to think that. It hurt to look.

He twirled her out, albeit clumsily, because Liesel Meminger had no clue how to dance. Regardless, a small, surprised smile escaped from the confines of her mouth and she laughed - a sound he lived to draw from her - before he caught her back to him.

Her head fell against his shoulder once again, resting in the crook of his neck, and he couldn't help but rest his cheek against her tangled hair. Her cold fingers only just grazed the back of his neck, causing him to suppress a shiver trembling down his spine that he knew had nothing to do with temperature. He could feel her soft breathing steaming up his throat, and he wondered briefly if she wanted to kill him. Not a bad way to die, he had to admit.

If he turned his head even slightly, his lips would find her forehead, or her eyelid, or the spot just above her ear. Too many options. Too many marvellous possibilities that made his heartbeat rise into a storm beneath his chest. Because he knew that if his lips did find her skin, it would take a lot to drag him away.

While Rudy's brain had sped up considerably, Liesel's had strangely enough slown right down. It wasn't that she was ignorant of her situation, it was more that, if she acknowledged it, she would force herself to pull away, and unlike the occasion where he accidently fell on top of her a month or so ago, this wasn't something they could easily shrug off. They had pushed the boundaries to disturbing levels, levels that she hadn't known existed, and now she didn't want to go back.

Liesel knew this. She also knew that the moment when she did pull away would be another of trying to explain to each other what was going on, another moment of not knowing what the hell was going on themselves. It was hard to tell where she stood with her feelings for Rudy on a normal day, let alone a day when he had her pressed up against him, his breathing in her hair, with seemingly no other intent than to forget his fears for a while.

She didn't want to think about what any of it meant, much less how she could possibly come up with an excuse for why she herself was pressed up against him, her lips dangerously close to his neck, so willingly. Quite frankly, she had no wish to deal with any of this bullshit at the present moment.

So she stayed. And she danced - no matter how awkwardly - with her best friend. And tried to forget the the moment where she would inevitably run.

***A Sense Of Irony***

**If only Liesel's emotions weren't so confused and opressed,**

**And Rudy wasn't so ridiculously ignorant,**

**It would have saved the two several years of frustration.**

Niether of them really noticed when they began to grind to a halt. In actual fact, it took several seconds for them to realise that they hadn't moved for a while. She still rested against his neck, he held her closer than ever; anyone who was near enough or cared enough to observe would have thought they were embracing.

It finally struck Rudy when he suddenly felt her tense up, her limbs turn to ice. A panicked, curling wisp of breath caught his throat, and he remembered with a sharp, frosty jolt where he was. Who he was with.

His arm involentarily loosened around her waist as he tried to gather together the past few minutes (hours?) in his head. Work out why the hell he had chosen to do this and quite possibly fuck everything up. He felt her extracting herself from him, pulling away. When he looked at her, her expression was empty, hard as the frozen earth beneath their feet, and she was not looking at him. As she stepped away, the warmth stepped away with her, leaving him suddenly gripped in winter's cold fingers. It was all he could do to watch stupidly as she collected the book from the roots of the tree, and began to walk swiftly away.

'Liesel.' The word sounded eerily amplified in the white silence, echoing desperately across the snow. She paused in her tracks, then reluctantly turned to face him.

His body reacted before his mind did, which often was the case with Rudy. Several footsteps in the snow closed the gap between them and he stood before her, his lungs suddenly empty and impossibly heavy in his chest. His hand reached out and touched her cheek, and a small portion of his brain - the one that was not based solely on her - asked him what he thought he was doing. As usual, he ignored it.

It would have been too easy to kiss her then. Anyone else probably would have done it by now. He could have stolen her lips and be done with it. But he couldn't.

It was that look. The look of a wild rabbit caught in a car's headlamps, that impending knowledge of destruction speeding towards it. Her lips were parted and her eyes were wide and afraid. He had never seen her look so vulnerable, not since the day she appeared a filthy nine year old clinging to the gate of her house. She looked him as if she were readying herself for defeat, preparing for a messy ending. It was fear.

And for the first time, Rudy knew what Liesel Meminger was thinking.

He wanted to step away but he couldn't. He wanted to prove to her that her fear was unjustified: that it was him, not anyone else. But again, he simply couldn't. His hand fell limply to his side, the words dead on his tongue - not that there was anything _extremely_ intelligent to say in the first place. Her dark eyes impaled him through his chest, puncturing his ribs and deflating whatever hope he had.

Because Rudy was afraid himself. He could take a thousand brutal assaults to his pride from the likes of Deutscher and Chemmel, and still resurface from the ashes fighting. A million more punches and he'd still get back to his feet. He would never be afraid of them. He could outrun them any day.

But he couldn't outrun her. Because for some stupid, screwed-up reason, no matter how far he ran, he would always find himself running back to her, whether she realised it or not.

He wasn't afraid of them. He was afraid of her.

And before he knew it, she herself had stepped away from him. Her eyes were once again closed and unreadable, and for the first time in his life, he was grateful for it. Her fingers unconsciously curled into fists, then loosened again. Her contemplative gaze painted the snow at her feet, and a small frown pinched her features. Then she shook her head again, and turned away, walking briskly back towards the road.

Rudy nearly tripped in his haste to catch up with her, falling into step beside her. Her eyes did not waver from the horizon ahead. The book was held protectively to where her frozen heartbeat no doubt pulsed, beneath layers of skin and bone and ice. The silence was uninterrupted, thicker and sharper than her dark eyes.

As they reached the bridge, Liesel halted.

'Oh shit.'

'What?' Rudy looked at her, but her wide eyed gaze remained fixed on the other side of the bridge. His eyes followed her line of sight, reaching the feet of none other than Viktor Chemmel, with a collection of his finest toy soldiers lumbering along behind him.

'Oh shit,' he agreed, staring in horror as number two of his antagonist list drew dangerously near.

'He's seen us,' her voice was low.

'Goddamn,' he muttered. 'Guess we'll just have to get past him.'

'It's been nice knowing you, saukerl.'

'You too, saumensch.'

The large boy was heading towards them, a malicious smirk stuck to his handsome face. The other boys followed in his wake, like wolf cubs trailing after the parent, well trained not to yap or bite until ordered.

'Well, well,' Viktor exclaimed welcomingly, menace positively dripping from his smooth voice. 'If it isn't Rudy Steiner and his whore,' a acknowledging bow was thrown at Liesel's feet. She felt the book sliding from her grip, pulled neatly from her by cigarette stained fingers. 'What are we reading?' he asked casually, flipping through the pages.

Liesel froze up beside Rudy, her eyes trained on the mound of paper in that bastard's hands. He stepped forward. 'This is between us. It has nothing to do with her. Come on, give it back.'

Viktor igored Rudy and smirked at Liesel. 'The Whistler. Any good?'

'Not bad. You can keep it, I've finished it.' Her voice was low and murderous, but there was just enough of a trace of panic in it for a smile to curl on the boy's mouth.

'Oh, is that so?' he asked, deliberately turning each page before her agitated eyes. 'So tell me, how does it end?'

The words momentarily froze on her tongue as she tried to work out what to say. Of course she hadn't reached the end yet, and unfortunately, her silence as good as slapped Viktor in the face with that fact. His grin grew wider.

'What a shame,' he said with a disapproving sigh.

Rudy spoke up desperately, 'Look, it's me you're after. Leave her out of it. I'll do anything you want.'

The boy shook his head with his poisenous smile. 'No, _I'll_ do what _I_ want.'

The book dangled temptingly from his fingers. If she could just be quick enough, the book could be her's again, snatched from his hands in seconds. What didn't occur to her - and what probably _should_ have occured to her - was that Rudy was turning over the same thought in his ridiculously idiotic head.

It only took Rudy lunging towards the book in his hand for Liesel to realise that Viktor had wanted this to happen. It was in the way he deftly swung the book over his head as Rudy's fingernails just bit the cover, and a pitying smirk so conveniently appeared as he did so.

He tutted down at Rudy, who's wide eyes were stuck to the object in his hands, as if one move would trigger what was no doubt coming. Viktor walked over to the edge of the bridge, the book hanging over the railings. The two of them suddenly became acutely aware of the tumbling sound of the Amper River rushing beneath their feet.

'Please,' Rudy choked out.

A flick of the boy's wrist, and The Whistler was released into the sky, a flapping square toppling through the heavy white clouds. Like a drop of ink in water before it started blossoming out.

The river caught the book in cold, wet hands.

A short, sound of devastation escaped the Book Thief's lips.

And everything else left Rudy's mind as he took off for the water's edge, throwing off his winter coat, and plunged in.

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><p><strong>AN: A lot of the dialogue at the end is taken from the actual book and belongs to Markus Zuzak, in case any of you were thinking of suing me. **

**Again, I hope you enjoyed this chapter because I had a hell of a time writing it, and since I generally take a good four years to update, I'd like to thank you all for your continued support and wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year too. **

**Thanks for reading, you guys are the best.**


	14. Slipped

**A/N: Hey guys. I don't know why I wrote this. It is by far the darkest chapter I have written, and I'm so sorry for that. I really am. But as soon as I thought of it months ago, I couldn't get it out of my head, so brace yourselves, it's going to dig deep.**

**If I'm honest, I dont really know what qualifies for a trigger warning, but there will be mild suicidal themes in this chapter, so if you are sensitive to that kind of thing, please don't feel you have to read it. Again, I'm very very sorry.**

**Please review, and enjoy (if you can).**

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><p>If she ever asks again, he'll tell her he slipped.<p>

He knows it's a lie.

She knows it's a lie.

But it's what they tell themselves.

***One Small, Sad Fact***

**Rudy Steiner sat at the edge of the world,**

**His feet dangling.**

Soft, warm sunlight leaked from behind ash stained clouds, dripping across his face and illuminating his yellow hair. A light breeze brushed past him every now and then, muttering polite, tuneless excuses as it passed him and on through the trees. The abstract contortions of the rippling water beneath his feet clapped and chattered as it rushed onward towards the afternoon light.

He sat on the edge of path, in a pool of scattered dust and wandering footprints from long ago, under a structure of familiar, rusted metal. It was comforting, almost: how well he knew this place. A river, a bridge, a boy. Everything was how it should be.

Except those last words were wrong.

The taste of forced normality was cold and dusty in his mouth, and every now and then, he would try to spit it out into the river and expel it from his system. But it stayed. Because despite the fact that everything had changed, this place remained exactly how it was before. It still moved onward, bubbling, singing, breathing, not worrying itself with the troubles of humans. The world kept turning, smiling, throwing a courteous heil or two to anyone who paid generously enough. The boy was left behind crying out for his family in a mountain of broken home. Small, and alone.

And very, very sad.

It was the only word that he could really think of. If it were Liesel, she could have conjured up a thousand different extraordinary, beautiful words that he could have nurtured on his tongue, spat out to those who kept fawning over him in sympathetic ignorance. Heartbroken, devastated, broken: the possibilities were endless. But the only word that seemed to make any sense, that he could consciously describe himself as, was sad.

A small, lonely, childish word. Like him.

***Duden Dictionary Definition***

**Sad**

**adjective**

**A feeling of deep sorrow; unhappiness**

**See also: Rudy Steiner**

Not that Liesel could have produced the words. The Book Thief hadn't spoken for days.

The funeral had ended not too long ago. Not that he really knew for certain: it seemed like it was drawing to a close when he began to walk away. He had left them sleeping under the earth; under halos of paper white flowers; under the steady grey flow of soft, useless words that dripped from the priest's mouth. His whole family were sleeping: closed eyes and silent hearts and lemon yellow hair. Locked in a wooden box like a treasure chest.

His fingers had traced their names stamped into the stone, trying to grasp the fact that these neat ridges and smooth curves had once made letters; had once made names. Now they were just words.

***Another Small, Sad Fact***

**I stood beside the boy, in that graveyard.**

**I watched him leave a kiss in his mother's cold hand.**

**Something to remind her of her son,**

**Still living and breathing.**

**And wishing he wasn't.**

**Oh Rudy.**

Somewhere else, there was a girl made of ice. Sculpted from ash-stained porcelain; brown eyes completely rusted at the edges; slowly crumbling. She stood not too far from the edge of the world herself, gazing down at where her second parents lay. She dripped tears and snow. Ash stained her hair and embedded in her fingers.

He could remember warmth. He could remember dust. Between the hazy, tear-stained, ash-stained dreams that he would break out of in a trembling sweat, he could remember her hands, those sweet, blistered fingers reaching up to touch his face, stroke his hair, run across his lips, until sleep dragged him away again. Only when he awoke some time before dawn did he realise that she had been there beside him the whole night, breathing, gasping, silently weeping as another receding nightmare left its bite. He did not know at what point she had appeared in his room, nor if he had actually noticed that she had slid under his duvet, but either way, it didn't really matter.

Somewhere far, far away, another Rudy would have been positively thrilled to find Liesel in his bed, but for some reason, it made him want to cry. He remembered tracing along her curled form with his eyes, realising how small she was - little more than a dusty collection of bones and skin and a beating heart. He remembered watching her wake up: the emptiness of her eyes as they opened, the last rain of the dream she had been drowning in washing away. He watched the recollection catch up with her, clawing up her arms, tightening around her throat. He remembered dragging her closer, or dragging himself closer - he wasn't quite sure - and burying his face in her shoulder, in an attempt to blind himself from the next few hours that loomed up before him.

And there he stayed, clinging tightly onto her, until her ribs pressed patterns into his chest, until the sunlight leaked across the floor. Then, as silently as she came, she was gone again. There was dust on the pillow where she had slept.

They came for him not long after. The formal attire they clothed him in was so large that he practically drowned in it, the sleeves hanging off his wrists. He wasn't entirely sure who the clothing belonged to, nor why there was a strange emptiness to Frau Hermann's pale eyes as she handed it over, but he did not question.

He supposed they looked quite pathetic: two bony teenagers with dirt in their hair and bruises painted on their skin in elegant, over-sized mourning clothes. The dress Liesel wore reached past her grubby knees, and she had pushed her sleeves up to her elbows, a habit she had never really grown out of - what with petty crimes and fierce games of football in the street. He tried not to think about the fact that all this had existed only a few days ago, before it began raining bombs. Before I paid a visit.

In fact, he tried not to think at all. Thinking was bad. Thinking would make him remember. Remembering would make him see them. And that would leave him crying, and wailing, and wanting them back, because he missed them so goddamn much.

And so, he walked away. Before the empty words left their bite. Before the silence closed around his heart. Before he could think to stay.

It was a familiar road he followed, worn hard by the soles of their boots. It didn't even occur to him: as the sound of chattering water blossomed in the air, as the ground began to lean forward in its eagerness to meet the river. It was almost instinctual, if his instincts hadn't been left rotting in the snowy bones of his home. No change had marked it. If he kept walking, maybe he could pretend that nothing had happened. That if he turned around and walked home, there would be a home to walk to: a mother to kiss his forehead and ask him where the hell he'd been all day, sisters to hang off his limbs and try to tie scraps of ribbon into his hair, and a brother to laugh while he suffered sullenly at their hands.

He knew it was a lie.

But that's what he told himself.

Now he was here, sat on the edge of his childhood, where many kisses were forgotten or caught, and the ground had been beaten by their running feet.

The hours had slipped by slowly, drifting along with the river. Not that he would have noticed. Time seemed to sit beside him, watching the world walk by. He wished it would stop and take him with it.

Deep down in his belly, there was grief: raw and aching and biting and oh, it hurt. It really, really hurt. Slowly unfurling in his veins like a drop of ink in water, creeping past the walls of rubble that the shock had built up. But they were slipping away. Everything was slipping away. And he let it, because he didn't know what else he could do.

He would weep, but his eyes stayed painfully empty. He wanted to weep, because if he wept, he could have done with it and move on. But the tears wouldn't come. And so he stayed, the poisonous tears caught somewhere beneath his ribs, gradually corroding him. Why did it hurt so much? He needed his mother. She always seemed to make the pain go away. He needed her to comfort him, and tell him he would be fine - like when his father had gone to fight. Like when he was younger and had scraped his knee until it bled. She would smile, and tell him to be brave. Only a few years later, she stopped smiling. Being brave became less of a request, more of a requirement.

It wasn't really a word he knew the meaning of any more. It used to mean not crying when you fell over, or when someone stole your football. As he grew older, brave was jumping into icy rivers. Brave meant stealing apples, stealing books, and hoping one day to steal a kiss. But then they snatched his father, in the name of bravery. And then brave was dying for a corrupt cause. Brave was another piece of propaganda.

It was around that point that Rudy Steiner had decided he didn't want to be brave. Brave could go fuck itself.

Now it was just another empty word, buried beneath the earth with his mother, and his siblings. Several words had stopped meaning anything: their significance slipping away like the fleeting crescent smiles in the river below him. He didn't know what home meant anymore. It tasted almost familiar, but cold in his throat. He looked down at the water. The water looked back. He spat the word into its face, sending it scattering across the fragmented surface.

***Did It Care?***

**No.**

**It moved on regardless.**

**And he envied it.**

He wondered if he'd slip.

Everything else had: the words, the bones of his home, the life he used to know, sliding through his fingers like the rushing water beneath him. And doubtless, the faces and voices of his family would too, their features carved in smoke, the sounds and words dimming and dissolving. He didn't want to lose them, but they had already been lost days ago, carried off with the fragile, burning snow. Carried away in my cold arms.

His eyes fell to the river again. The bridge sat rigid just under three metres above the water, and he knew from experience that it ran deep at the centre. He could fall, let the water take him with it, until he all he breathed was water. He could sleep, without the nightmares, without the acidic grief, and never forget the sound of his sisters' laughter. The world would move on, and the boy would move on with it.

He wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid. Maybe it was the numbness that had spread through his veins. Maybe he was fearless. Maybe he was brave like his mother told him to be. He didn't know anymore. It hurt to think now. It hurt very much.

There was no fear anymore. Jesse Owens didn't know the meaning of fear.

Only sadness.

The boy pushed himself to his feet, his fingers digging into the metal structure on either side of him. The sunlight clung to his lemon hair, sliding down his face. He was trembling, but he didn't know why.

I would like to have said that his family stood with him on that bridge. I really would. But sadly, it doesn't work like that. So I stood beside him instead. I watched him as his hand clenched around the bridge's familiar bones, then loosened. He did not take a last glance around, like so many souls I knew. Maybe if he had, he would have heard his name. But he didn't.

***One Small, Sad Fact***

**I watched as Rudy Steiner stood at the edge of the world.**

**And I watched him fall off.**

It was strange, when he thought about it. The water moved like the flicker of grey ribbon on the surface, chattering and clapping in an enthusiastic, tuneless cacophony. But underneath, it was still, and silent: painfully, beautifully silent. He was blinded from the sounds and smiles of the world as the river swallowed him whole like a penny sweet. Not for the first time.

It was familiar. An odd mix of fish in air and bird in water. Wrapped in winter: a gown of ice and snow. On a treasure hunt. Or a game of hide and seek. Whatever you wanted to call it. Only this time, there was nothing to find. No book. No kiss. No words.

His overly large clothes bloomed and unfurled about him, pulling him downward with soft, heavy fingers. Sunlight reached through the thick layers of river, striking his skin until it glowed pale blue. His vision was blurred, every sharp edge softened till blunt, nearly non existent. He couldn't think straight. The words - those damn words - floated through his head, once empty and painful, now nonsensical. He wondered if he'd ever work out their meaning; they slid from his lips in pretty, spherical beads that rose up in the water before him, but they made no more sense now than they did before.

Sad, brave, home, Himmel, kiss, family, words. They slipped away from him, drifting out of his reach, and he let them. Words were not, and would never be, his strong point.

Every inch of him was bitten with cold, but he couldn't feel a thing. The river's fingers scraped down his throat, filling his belly, his chest, his eyes. His lungs ached with the struggle for oxygen, grasping at the sunlight like an anchor. An unfortunate fact of life is that anchors always seem to sink. Ironic, when you think about it.

Though his chest was cracking like glass, and his ribs were tangled in his stomach, he couldn't feel it. There was only the slow, distorted movement of his limbs, and the sharp taste of deja vu on his tongue. Somewhere far, far away was the grief, still present, still heartbreaking, still scratching at his insides. Somewhere further away was his mother, eyes closed, heart shut, with Himmel Street snow in her still lungs. And a kiss from her son in her left hand.

His eyes grew heavy. It would be like falling asleep. He hadn't slept in days: the thought was sweet and soothed the ache in his chest a little. He couldn't feel his hands anymore. He couldn't feel anything really. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but either way he didn't care. He just wanted to sleep.

It would have been too easy right then. Another Steiner to carry away, another colour to collect. Lemon yellow - never had such a bright, childish colour been so bitter. His soul was there for me to take, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to. He was slipping away, slowly, so slowly.

And so I reached out for him.

And I would have taken him.

If someone else hadn't beaten me to it.

Apparently, books aren't the only thing she steals.

The river erupted in a burst of silver as the glass surface shattered. It jolted Rudy out of his slumber, only just, as his eyes scoured the blurry, grey oblivion for the intruder. Small, blistered fingers reached out and caught his arm, the collar of his shirt, anywhere they could reach, and clutched at him. He knew those hands. Those sweet, wonderful hands.

She was here. His Book Thief. His glorious, glorious Liesel Meminger.

Her fingers were insistent, gripping him with surprising strength for a collection of bones. She tugged at him, trying to drag him away. Her eyes were wide in panic, her feet kicked frantically to try and keep herself up under his weight.

Shit. She can't swim.

The last scraps of oxygen clung to the inside of his throat, and he suddenly became acutely aware of the lack of air. With what little strength remained stuck to his limbs, he caught her around her waist and made for the sunlight that glared tauntingly down at them. His lungs were twisting and contorting, standing on their final arteries, and he thought he was going to burst. The water was leaking through his teeth. He could not survive much longer. She was fighting to pull him up to the surface, and he kicked upward with his last breath.

The surface shattered once again as two youths burst up from the arms of the river, desperately drinking in the oxygen, their throats burning and fragmented with water. From edge to edge of his eyelids was flooded with light spilling across the sky. He could hear himself gasping for breath: the heavy, wincing cries that issued from the beneath his damp ribs. His chest rattled and heaved; he dripped with October.

It took him a moment to remember that his right hand was still stuck by the fingernails to Liesel's arm. She and the river seemed to be wrestling, and the river was winning. She fought violently to stay above the crowd of benignly jabbering smiles that hit her in waves, her parted lips only just out of their reach. Her hands were still knotted in his shirt collar, and unlikely ever to loosen.

He pushed her through the water towards the shore, only just managing to keep them both up. He kicked off his heavy, dragging shoes, making a mental note to apologise to Frau Hermann later. His toes brushed soft, watery earth; he forced his way forward until his feet sank into the riverbed. Liesel also seemed to have found land and was dragging him towards the bank.

Upon reaching the sloping, muddy ground, they collapsed: eyes shut, bodies trembling, weak enough to snap in half. The sky tripped and stumbled above them, the water sizzling in their throat, and everything hurt. His head felt disturbingly light, every movement staggered and shaky. He managed to push himself up onto his elbow, spitting out the remaining river water, before collapsing back down again.

He can vaguely hear her lungs desperately grasping at oxygen, dragging it from the air with thirsty gulps. With a tentative yet dizzying movement that sends a jolt of nausea through his spine, he turns his head to see her thin, heaving ribcage, her eyes clenched shut, her sparse fingernails grinding into the dirt beneath her as she tries to find something to cling onto.

If he had the energy to, he would reach out for her and pull her into his chest, soothe her aching breaths, feel her damp, pounding heartbeat drum somewhere against his ribs and know that she was still alive. But since he was practically in the same position as she was, there was no guarantee that he would survive the exertion.

But apparently, she could.

It was a second. A heartbeat. Or maybe an hour: his mind was far beyond the capability of counting at this precise moment. And then the drunken sky was eclipsed by her, kneeling above him, her long, matted hair dripping onto his skin. Her cold fingers held his face, leaving trails of October across his cheeks. Her eyes were rusted to the core, worn and metallic and cold as iron. They impaled him like a blade, as they always seemed to do, and he struggled not to look away.

'You're alive,' she murmured in wonder, more to herself than anyone. 'You're alive,' she repeated, as if testing the words on her tongue, as if trying to convince herself.

It took several tries - many of which unearthed the remains of Amper River down his chin - before he managed to scrape a weak 'yeah' from the back of his throat.

A sharp, stinging pain struck the side of his face as she slapped him hard, and he caught a surprised yelp between his teeth. He stared up at her in shock, the bite in his cheek curling through his veins like acid. If any concept of speech hadn't been knocked from him, and he wasn't astoundingly afraid of her right now, he would have been angry. But he was caught in silence under her barbed wire stare.

'Say you fell.' The words were short and pulled out between gritted teeth, and he had no idea what they meant.

'What?' he choked out.

A slow, measured breath escaped her lips and she shut her eyes for her moment. 'Say you slipped and fell.'

He simply stared at her, eyes wide.

'Rudy!' she growled, and for a moment, he saw a flicker of grief underneath her metallic eyes. 'Just tell me you slipped.'

He shook his head in bewilderment. 'Liesel-'

'Please,' she demanded hoarsely, her voice shaking, 'Please, just say you slipped.'

'I-' he gulped and began again. 'I don't-'

'Say it,' she pleaded, the words crumbling before her. 'You stupid bastard, just say it.'

'I slipped,' he burst out. She said nothing. 'I slipped,' he repeated uncertainly.

He looked up at her face, and felt a sharp bite of remorse somewhere in his chest. Her eyes were wide, corroded at the centre, and slowly melting. She looked heartbroken, devastated. And very, very sad.

She knew.

He wanted to tell her otherwise. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. But he didn't even know the truth himself. It fled further away from him every time he attempted to think why. All reasoning had abandoned him a while ago. Rudy had never wanted to die. He had wanted to remember that he was still alive. He wanted the world to take him with it. Run away with the water. He had wanted to escape. But what was the difference? In a world where it rained bombs and siblings slept underground, was there any difference? Escape and death meant the same thing now, in the same way bravery and fear had woven together until they were indistinguishable.

Before he could think to do anything, her lips were pressed against his cheek - where her hand had struck - soft and warm and wet. His breathing slowed, his eyes closed. He felt his fingers reach up and curl around strands of her dark yellow hair.

She pulled away, her expression as unreadable as it always was. 'Why Rudy?' she said quietly. 'Why would you?'

_Because everyone is dead._

Rudy looked up at her, alive and glorious and damp and so very sad. He touched her dripping face, and watched a flicker of a smile brush across her lips, before the mourning clouded her features again.

'Because I slipped,' he said simply.

There was silence. And then he heard her voice again, as flat the concrete clouds that were looming up at the edge of the world. 'Because you slipped,' she conceded.

He caught one last glimpse of her: dirt woven into her almost-German hair, skin beaten raw by the benevolently malevolent river, and eyes that dripped molten rust. And then she was gone, replaced by an uneven heartbeat of pounding footsteps against earth and concrete.

***One Last Sad Fact***

**Rudy Steiner lay at the edge of the world,**

**Completely alone.**

**It was only then that the boy finally wept.**

If she ever asks again, he'll tell her he slipped.

He knows it's a lie.

She knows it's a lie.

But that's just what they tell themselves.

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><p><strong>AN: Again, I'm very sorry, for both the lateness and for this chapter in general. It was not the easiest chapter I've ever written, nor was it the best, and it took a hell of a long time to try and write to some kind of acceptable quality. But I really wanted to show Rudy's thoughts on it all: his vulnerability and his grief. Because he was human, and a kid at that, and his whole family had just been ripped from him, and that's pretty damn devastating.**

**Either way, I hope you liked the chapter, if not enjoyed it (understandable), and please leave a review, because I love hearing from you all. Thanks again.**


	15. Girls

**A/N: Here it is. The final chapter of Victory, because this story is so goddamn long and holy shit, I have so much stuff I need to do. It was supposed to end at twenty chapters, but screw it, GCSEs are eating me alive. In any case, I have had the best time writing for you guys, and your feedback, favourites and just general support have made writing worthwhile for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.**

**For the last time, enjoy.**

* * *

><p>Rudy Steiner didn't really have a very extensive knowledge of girls.<p>

That much was true.

In fact, Rudy Steiner didn't really have an extensive knowledge of anything. That much was also true.

***Things Rudy Steiner Knew***

**1. How to run fast.**

He was pretty good at that. He knew how to pretend that he was losing, to see the bite of hope in his opponent's eager eyes, before he shot past them like a bullet: his rapid, pounding feet carving out a template for his rising heartbeat and propelling him further forward. He knew how to steal victory from under their feet.

Even boys with years stacked upon their shoulders, muscle on their bones, idiotic recklessness curled around their beating hearts, even they could not beat him. Various faces and sizes would sidle up to him in the street, in the playground, a grin on their face, a smirk on others. And yet they would all end in a scowl. Somehow, he always managed to slip past them, until they were far, far behind him, and only the wind could keep up with him. He would always win.

Because he was Jesse Owens, fastest man in the world. Fastest man in the universe.

Or he had tried to be. He had dragged coal from his fireplace across his skin and smeared it on his face. He had run and run until his lungs burst. He had tasted the sound of the tape snapping on his tongue as he crossed the finish line. He had been victorious. And he could almost feel the heavy press of the gold swinging across his chest.

But his Papa had growled at him, and scrubbed the black from his skin until it stung a tender pink. Something about 'wrong' and 'safe blue eyes' - he couldn't quite recall. He wasn't entirely sure why people threw odd glances at him, nor why some of the boys at school sneered at him, nor why the panic had stamped dark circles under his Papa's eyes. Maybe he wasn't quite good enough to be Jesse Owens yet.

So until he could be Jesse Owens, fastest man in the world, he would be Rudy Steiner, fastest boy in the world.

Yes. He knew how to run fast.

***Things Rudy Steiner Knew***

**2. How to play football**

Or the Himmel Street version of football. Which often consisted of a ball, two goals and a lot of heavy violence. He knew how to tackle, he knew how to score, he knew how to ram his foot into another boy's crotch until he cried (he also knew from hard experience how to avoid such attacks). He liked to think he was quite skilled at football. The art of tripping Tommy Müller over when he had the ball had been perfected over time, and was a talent he prided himself on, the smug little bastard.

So it may not have been real football (he was yet to find an actual game of football that bended the rules so viciously) but whatever it actually was, he was pretty damn good at it.

Despite his knowledge of running, and football, and Jesse Owens, it was fair to say that Rudy Steiner didn't know much else.

He certainly didn't know much about girls. However, he knew enough about what girls were expected to be.

What he had heard over the years from fairy tales he had been read as a child and from older boys at his school, including his brother, had accumulated into a small, scrappy pile of relatively useless information at the back of his head, somewhere in the dusty corners of his skull. He knew girls were meant to be beautiful, with a beautiful face and a beautiful body and a beautiful heart - whatever that was supposed to mean. They were meant to flutter their eyelashes and say pretty words and smile and fall in love with you.

Or at least the princesses in the stories had been like that. Some of the richer girls he knew acted like that: giggling whenever boys walked past or even looked at them; stealing their mother's rouge and staining their lips red; gazing at people with eyes that dripped like honey. He had always thought they were quite stupid, but then, if princes and heroes would fight dragons and slay beasts for them, he supposed he must be doing something wrong. He had resigned himself in some way or another to eventually falling in love with one of them, because that was what they were there for.

He also knew that some of the older girls were idolised, though why, he wasn't quite sure. He had heard Kurt muttering and laughing to one of his friends as one of said girls - Gretl Schumer, he thinks her name was - walked past. There were several words that were foreign and strange to him, and he ignored them as they shuffled conspiratorially over his head. But he distinctly remembered the word 'tease', which he thought was odd, because he knew that was something you did to your younger siblings to annoy them. His attention had turned to the girl in question, noting how her hips swayed a little as she walked, how her chest seemed to wobble, and he wondered why the boys were so intoxicated by her.

He knew about kissing too. That bizarre thing that humans did with their mouths. The seed from which love bursts and unfurls like a rose; the sweet, acidic promise from one lover to another; the cruel destroyer and solid foundations of sanity. Whatever you want to call it. He knew that boys liked to kiss girls, he knew that girls enjoyed receiving kisses, but he wasn't entirely sure why. Apparently, there was some strange, secret joy to be had in the lips of another.

Whenever his incessantly darting thoughts paused briefly over the concept of kissing, he had always felt a bite of curiosity in his insides. If the fairy tales he was read as a child were anything to go by (which they most likely weren't) the experience was a symphony of glorious, mind-shattering revelations - true love's kiss, they oh-so poetically called it - and quite frankly, he wanted to try it.

***A Spoiler, If You Will***

**Later on in his life,**

**Rudy would discover the extraordinary lengths**

**A person would go for a kiss.**

**As well as the victory of receiving one.**

Later, Rudy decided that maybe it was an age thing, and that all these mysteries that enveloped the opposite sex in an opaque veil would eventually be revealed to him when he turned, say, ten. And in the meantime, he would run, and play football, and not give a damn about girls for as long as he feasibly could.

Despite the fact his knowledge of the female race was lacking considerably, he knew just enough to define one fact.

***Things Rudy Steiner Knew***

**3. She was strange.**

On that grey day, with that grey sky, when the grey street was painted with silence.

She almost seemed to emerge from the sky: from a large, soft ocean of white clouds over a large, soft ocean of white snow, like a bird. It was almost as if a child had miscounted the amount of people in their drawing, and hastily scribbled an extra set of bones in the corner of the paper. Another messy face with a crescent-moon, crayon smile. Except she didn't have a smile. Or it didn't look like it.

The black car slid silently into the street, unnoticed by a majority - mostly because a particularly violent game of football had broken out (already, Rudy wore a few neat, grey bruises on his skin). The yells of triumph and furious cheers tumbled and rolled across the snow, occasionally stabbing the air at an especially vile foul, and all sounds of the rusty motor engine slumping down in exhaustion was drowned in the staccato punches of noisy children.

The car remained silent, watching the play in mild curiosity while the woman inside stepped out and walked up to number thirty three, and knocked a few neat clicks upon the door. The door opened, and Frau Hubermann stood in the doorway, weighing the woman up with a sweep of those wary, no-bullshit eyes that could press a bite of fear into the bravest souls. Swift, quiet words were handed from gloved hands to laundry-eaten ones, and then she called into the house for her husband. A few heads turned as Herr Hubermann came into view behind his cardboard box wife, and a couple more as the two shuffled out of the house, cigarette smoke curling from the latter's mouth like flowers. They followed the three to the car, then grew bored and returned to the game.

'What's wrong with this child?' The snapping of Frau Hubermann cut somewhere above the din like a whip, but no one seemed to notice. Several minutes passed by, fourteen and a half to be exact, and the world paid no attention to Hans Hubermann, hunched over beside the car, having a quiet conversation in its ear.

Suddenly, any focus that was once caught on a fist fight breaking out between two particularly pissed off eight year olds had now wandered over to where the car was, peering in the window and steaming up the glass.

Rudy looked up from the ball that was caught struggling between his feet, and halted where he stood, the ball rolling irritably away from him. His eyes fell on the car, and his head cocked slightly to the side, to try and catch a glimpse of what resided inside.

And suddenly, there was a girl.

Where there had once been no one, suddenly she appeared. As if she had accidentally got lost and turned up late. As if she had always meant to turn up. She just appeared.

And she was strange.

As she surfaced, Rudy took in many things.

She was small. She wasn't pretty. Her face was thin and white; her hair was blonde - very German - and fell about her face in a tangled mess of yellow wisps. Her clothes was ever so slightly too large for her, hanging off her small matchstick-bone frame: they wore her. Her lips were pale, dusty pink and pressed tightly together, bound by silence. She wasn't extraordinary. She wasn't one of those princesses in the stories. She wasn't really much like anyone.

Judging by her size, she couldn't have been much older than seven or eight. But then she turned her head, and he saw her eyes. They were large, round, and achingly wide. And they were old. So very old. Deep brown, like earth on a rainy day - very not German - but sharp, like steel. Rusted steel. They caught the street in metallic hands, and in one calculating sweep of her vision, she seemed to have analysed the deepest secrets of Himmel. He felt strangely vulnerable as her gaze briefly flit over over him (a sensation he would become incredibly used to over the next few years).

Her eyes were sad. Undeniably, irrevocably, deeply, truly sad.

She was being ushered away from the car and towards the house, her footsteps dragging reluctantly through the snow. Her breathing was coming out in short, steaming bursts as she was pushed towards the house, and a sudden panic struck her features. Her lips were parted, and she looked around wildly for escape.

He could hear the curious murmurs and whispers around him: hushed, childish words stifled behind gloved hands. Various residents had drifted out of their houses, drawn out by the sudden lack of furious, reassuring sound: some stood in their doorways under the pretence of checking on their children, some flat out stared.

He watched hands curl around the small garden fence; tighten, as if she were trying to strangle the rough, wooden teeth. He watched them attempt to untangle her fingers from the posts, and coax her into the house. But the girl would not move. There were clumps of tears at the edges of her large eyes.

'What are you arseholes looking at?' The sharp words were enough to bring him halfway back to his surroundings, a position from which he could just recognise the sudden flock of people that had spilled across the street. But not enough to untangle his gaze from the silent struggling of the girl.

The tears were making her eyes rust.

They finally got her inside. He finally pulled his eyes away. The street was empty.

And just like that, she disappeared again.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five days. The new kid on Himmel remained hidden from curious eyes. Curious blue eyes. Every now and then, he wondered briefly what had happened to the crying, dark-eyed child, where she had gone. But then his thoughts would wander away again, and she would remain untouched in that dusty pile of useless information that had collected at the back of his head. Weeping, holding onto that gate, silent. Rudy had never been the silent type.

He almost didn't notice her on the fifth day. Once again, he found himself in another football game, a surprisingly tame one at that. Tommy Müller had been allowed out of goal, a rare occurrence admittedly, and he twitched in pride as he shuffled away from the two snow stained garbage cans. Maybe he should have paid more attention. He never seemed to see her coming.

Of course she was in goal. It was custom for the new kid to get shoved into goal, mostly because no one else wanted to. There was also a good chance that letting a foreigner into the play would eventually conclude with a heavily injured child, but this was rarely brought up as an issue.

Everything was going pretty well, until Müller tripped Rudy over, in an energetic burst of wild, twitching defiance at being released into the actual game. A penalty was rewarded; the girl remained obstinately in goal; and everything else occurred accordingly.

It was always bound to happen. If Fate wasn't a colleague of sorts to me, I wouldn't have necessarily believed in the concept. But there was no doubt this was how events would unfold. And if not like this, than in some other bizarre fashion. He was always going to end up by her side in some way, shape or form.

***Welcome to the Himmel Street Championship***

**Featuring Rudy Steiner**

**Also known as Jesse Owens**

**Golden medal winner, fastest man in the world.**

**Versus**

**Strange, silent kid.**

**Let the games begin.**

And so they faced each other: the lemon haired, gold medalist and the girl built from matchsticks and rust. Now considerably closer in proximity than before, he took her in a second time with a drag of his blue eyes, feeling the familiar snap of confidence pulse and unfurl in his veins. She was undoubtedly small, and as a considerable amount of the goal was not taken up by her, she would be easy to aim around. He smirked: this would be easy.

His confident gaze snagged momentarily on her eyes, but it was enough for his bravado to falter and crack, if only for a second. There was no bite of hope. No bite of fear. There was nothing to betray that she felt anything. He was swallowed whole by her uncompromising gaze, as she waited patiently for him to shoot.

She didn't look nervous, nor apologetic for her rude interruption of all normality in the street, much less for taking up goal space. Rudy had grown accustomed to the proud, the hopeful, the anxious and the clueless, but one thing he certainly hadn't gotten used to was the lack of these things. He felt an inexplicable jolt of irritation somewhere at the back of his head - near where she often resided in his thoughts, if he ever happened to find himself there - that he couldn't drag a reaction from her.

Well screw that. If he couldn't now, he would in a few moments. He was goddamn Jesse Owens.

His feet pulled him back, ready to release and throw him forward like a slingshot. There was a pause - an extremely dramatic one, as he hoped it would be - in which boys and girls held their breath and Tommy Müllers twitched in anticipation. He let it hold for as long as possible, soaking in the potential glory. The air dripped with the events which would inevitably follow: rich like syrup.

He stood. And then he surged forward, kicking the ball squarely toward the goal.

And for some reason, the ball bounded back to him.

He looked up in surprise. The girl was laid on the ground on her side, her elbows scuffed and bruised with mud and snow, wearing a large, self satisfied grin on her face. If he had hoped to have unearthed some kind of reaction from her, he certainly wasn't disappointed right now. And of course, it annoyed him to no end.

He'd just have to do something about it.

***Things Rudy Steiner Knew***

**4. How to piss people off.**

His fingers were deep in snow and dirt and uprooting a good handful before he even registered the sharp, icy cold on his skin. He moulded it into a misshapen sphere and threw it. One thing he could pride himself on was his aim, because it hit her in the side of the face, successfully knocking the smirk off her face.

'How d'you like that?' he called at her, before turning and chasing after the ball.

He heard it, despite the sudden flood of yells and laughs as the other kids spilt back onto the street. Somewhere in the sea of voices and fouls, he still caught the word in his cold fingers.

'Saukerl.'

A small smile reached up from the back of his throat and prised his lips into a grin. So he may not have known much about girls - or anything else for that matter - but hell, this girl he liked.

***To Conclude***

**That, dear reader, is how Rudy Steiner met Liesel Meminger.**


End file.
